Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robandstephanielevy/2370634858/

Here’s social enterprise’s ‘chicken and egg’ problem: What came first the ‘social’ in entrepreneurship, or the ‘entrepreneurship’ in nonprofits? I’m impatient with most circular arguments, but this one might be fruitful. If innovation and trailblazing are integral to social enterprise, then it’s useful to ask: what part of the definition of ‘social enterprise’ is truly new? What is so innovative about social enterprise?

Early last week I braved an early exit from my microeconomics class under the angry glare of my professor to attend a meeting arranged by Social Innovation Generation at MaRS  for Ben Ramsden, founder of the UK based Pants to Poverty. Pants to Poverty sells underwear (I have a bright pink pair sitting on my desk), that is made out of a ‘golden supply chain’—a manufacturing process that has a double bottom line.

Also attending the meeting were an assortment of youth run organizations, amongst them Free the Children’s new social enterprise Me to We,  Football for Good, and of course, the Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada.

It turns out Pants to Poverty builds its marketing as a play on words. The term ‘pants’, in that precocious British slang, means “that’s shit”, or alternatively “underwear”. Literally, consumers buy pants to say ‘Pants to Poverty’. The premium cotton underwear that littered MaRS’ conference table had been made by a farming cooperative operating out of India’s suicide belt , created through factories practicing safe and fair wages, packaged by the cotton waste from that factory, and (it seems almost inconceivable) sold successfully to the same target market as Calvin Klein.

During the meeting with Ben, the excitement in the room was palpable. In retrospect, it was the use of business: aggressive (and cheeky) branding, and business efficiency; the excitement of delivering the underwear to consumers was what drove everything. As Ben said, people are more consumers than activists. But there’s something innovative and effective in injecting consumerism, the power of the market, into nonprofits.

I came out of that meeting convinced that at its most exciting, social enterprise straps itself into the market roller coaster and aggressively pursues the opportunity of (as Assaf likes to say) doing good better. The business aspect of social enterprise is what makes what we’re doing truly innovative.

So, there’s a certain rebellion in social enterprise. In all of us, there’s a certain need to scream ‘Pants!’ We will use the fastest, most effective method to make change. In this vein, social enterprise hopes to energize and stimulate. To startle and challenge. And most of all, to nudge the consumer in all of us towards growth.