Minnesota Public Radio conducted an interview today with Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic, current Harvard Business School professor, and author of the recent book True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership. In his remarks, George argued forcefully that, “the comparative advantage of the United States is in entrepreneurship and innovation”. He went on to advocate that, as the federal government determines its response to the financial crisis, it should focus on further strengthening these characteristics.

This reminded us of an intriguing blog entry that Nathaniel Whittemore of change.org wrote on the eve of the presidential election entitled “Barack Obama and the American Spirit of Social Entrepreneurship”. He reviews the history of s.e.:

"The spirit of social entrepreneurship is woven deep into the American story. Decades before the Declaration of Independence, American Quakers began the first sustained abolitionist movement against slavery in history, developing the techniques that future leaders would build upon to create an unstoppable global paradigm shift. Later, at the dawn of the Industrial Age of American commerce created wealth never before seen in the world, a new breed of "Progressive" social reformers including Jane Addams and photographer Jacob Riis changed the way we saw the urban poor and helped return their stories to the center of the American story."

And describes its current relevance:

"The job of the entrepreneur is to move resources from an area of lower yield to an area of higher yield. For a social entrepreneur, this means disavowing the orthodoxy of social change in order to find the solution best suited to the problem. It means acting in the space between the world as it should be and the world as it is."

"To solve the problems of the 21st century, they will have to enlist the help of social entrepreneurs already on the ground. But they will have to remind us that our work is not solely in the service of any individual’s particular mission, but part and parcel of building a more just society in which the “good” has been secured for all. That is the true “scale” we seek to achieve."

Read his full blog posting here.

Are we entering a new period in which government will more closely partner with and seek support from socially innovative organizations?  Will the current financial meltdown provide the necessary push to move toward an “all hands on deck” approach to solving our nation’s problems?  Or will the depth of our challenges bring leaders to view innovation and entrepreneurship as somehow “extraneous” or “extravagant”, and not sufficiently relevant to our core problems?

The comment section awaits.