Social Entrepreneurship and Collaboration Go Together Like…

The words “social entrepreneurship and collaboration” don’t exactly roll off one’s tongue. Nevertheless, as the Skoll World Forum 2010 gets underway, I have been reflecting on whether the Jazz musician Louis Jordan should have included the coupling in his 1949 song “Beans and Cornbread“.

Please humor me for a moment and consider these lyrics from Jordan’s song:

Beans hit Cornbread on the head, Cornbread said I’m almost dead
Beans told Cornbread now get up man, you know that we go hand in hand

Beans told Cornbread, it makes no difference what you think about me
But it makes a whole lot of difference what I think about you

It’s that second refrain that delegates attending the Skoll World Forum 2010, and following from afar, should pay the closest attention to.

Proponents of collaboration can write volumes on the potential they see in social entrepreneurs aligning their work for greater impact. (Read, it makes no difference what collaboration thinks of social entrepreneurship.) These calls for collaboration will amount to small change until business, foundation, and nonprofit leaders see collaboration as an indispensable discipline and practice it daily. (Read, it makes a whole lot of difference what social entrepreneurship thinks of collaboration.)

In this year’s theme for the Skoll World Forum, I like to think that we’re experiencing a turning point for the often trumpeted but seldom practiced discipline of collaboration. I am hopeful but not convinced that the attention drawn to collaboration this week as a vehicle for large scale impact will help make “How are you going to collaborate with others?” as common a question for would-be social entrepreneurs as “How are you going to reach critical mass?” and “How are you going to sustain the project once launched?”

If the tipping point in favor of collaboration is now, it comes despite enormous systemic and cultural obstacles.

The reality of how social entrepreneurship and collaboration interact is captured in the first refrain quoted above. The day-to-day practice of social entrepreneurship regularly puts the imperative to collaborate on life support. Grants and fellowships are awarded to individual organizations. Fan pages and Articles of Incorporation are singular. The time, funding, and incentives needed to prompt multiple organizations to work together are hard to come by. And most importantly, the courage and humility needed to pursue mission-serving collaborations are often painfully absent from the organizations we celebrate as exemplary social enterprises.

Long story short, there’s a lot of work to be done before social entrepreneurship and collaboration can go together “like beans and cornbread, “like bread and butter”, “like hotcakes and molasses, and (if all goes well this week), like the Skoll World Forum and Oxford Jam.