I had a discussion with one of my close friends about the discrepancies between job titles and social duties. We started off talking about musical artists and whether or not they were socially responsible for negative messages that they may communicate. Then we talked about religious ministers, and whether or not they were socially responsible for mentoring their audience as opposed to just teaching them. Then we arrived at the entrepreneur.

During this discussion, I exhibited my regular behavior as the devil’s advocate, arguing the counterpoints of all my friend’s points, just for the sake of developing a good argument. However, I have to admit that I became personally involved whenever my friend had a certain attitude about entrepreneurs.

My friend painted a picture of the entrepreneur as someone who has to be able to take advantage of things. I couldn’t objectively confirm if they were talking about opportunities or people, or a combination of the two, but in the context of the conversation, I took it as taking advantage of people. They went on to express their inability to stomach selling things to people that they don’t need. I said that if you think you are selling something to people that they don’t need, then you are in the wrong business and need to jump ship immediately. My friend agreed, but then argued that most successful people are people that are skilled at doing such things. I resisted questioning their definition of entrepreneurial success to pose the idea that there do exist “social entrepreneurs”, people who market social change. They agreed and then countered with a statement that there was a lack of social entrepreneurs.

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