This post was originally produced for Forbes.
Having covered social entrepreneurship for Forbes for nearly six years, one of the biggest issues I see in the community of change-makers is limited vision. The world’s most pressing problems—poverty, disease and climate change—are massive are require solutions that scale. It is time for social entrepreneurs to stop thinking small.
Most of the world’s population can’t afford to own a car. Current estimates are that there are just over a billion cars on the road. Even if we assume that most are owned by one car families and that many people who can afford a car don’t own one, we can quickly conclude that five billion people lack the economic resources even to own a Tata Nano.
While it is true that most of these five billion people have adequate food, water and shelter, they are not enjoying a lifestyle that most people in the developed world take for granted. And nearly a billion people in the world are living on less than $2 per day, aren’t s…