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Bill Drayton
Source: Bill Drayton

Become a World Leader: Embrace the "Everyone a Changemaker" Culture

This article originally appeared on Forbes India

Business and social sectors are in the midst of the most profound structural revolution, says Bill Drayton, the pioneer of social entrepreneurship. "The rate of change and the degree and extent of interconnection between the two sectors have been accelerating exponentially for the last three centuries. Business started the revolution, but now both the sectors are fully engaged in this transition. 

"In this world, every person must have the sophisticated skills of a change-maker to be able to contribute. 'The new inequality' that is dividing the world is the division between those who have these abilities and are engaged in the fluid, open and integrated architecture of the world of change, and those who don’t. The old model of giving people a skill which they would repeat for life does not work in this new world.

“This explains why income distributions are getting worse everywhere in the world,” says Drayton. “It also explains the rapid spread of ‘us-versus-them’ politics.”

"Young people, like the rest of us, love to be able to contribute, to be powerful. However, almost everywhere, the youth culture is not one of change-making. Many, many young people today are disempowered. It will take a very exceptional young person to swim against the youth culture and the adult barriers, to be a change-maker.

"For that small minority, having an entrepreneurial experience in their teens is a gigantic advantage in life. Great entrepreneurs (business and social) typically started out in their teens. An Ashoka analysis of LinkedIn one and a half years ago, showed that those individuals who had started something in their teens were at least four times more likely to be C-level leaders than the other professionals on the platform who hadn’t. Moreover, they were at least five times as likely to be entrepreneurs. 

"It is now important for everyone to master these abilities. Those who don’t, will be unable to contribute and condemned to live on the wrong side of ‘the new inequality’. If we can change this picture to ensure that every young person has these experiences, we will be meeting our obligations to them and building successful societies."

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