NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, April 22, 2013

The 10th annual Skoll World Forum, which brought together several hundred of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs to Oxford, wrapped up last week. The Forum serves as a useful barometer for how the climate of social enterprise is changing.

When launched in 2004, it was all about celebrating the unknown social entrepreneurs, helping to give them global recognition, credibility and a platform to engage with policy leaders and large corporations. In that task, it has succeeded brilliantly—over the past decade, social enterprise has become mainstream. Jeff Skoll picks out the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus in 2006 as a watershed moment; equally significant was Al Gore being named a Nobel laureate the following year.

So ten years in, after the microcredit boom and a global awareness of climate change, what’s the current thinking? What new, big idea now dominates the agenda and concerns of the Forum participants? And where do they think this field is going?