If you’re like me, you might think that ‘social entrepreneurship’ sounds like an oxymoron – along the lines of ‘hippy tycoon’ or ‘political class’.

Because if we’re honest, most of us would probably admit that people with an entrepreneurial bent can actually be a bit on the anti-social side. Simon Cowell, for example, or that America’s Cup guy … you know, the one who rorted a whole state and then claimed illness at his court appearances … meh, I forget who he was now. (If he could get away with it, so can I.)

But what if – and you might want to sit down for this – what if people with an unusual degree of initiative and ambition and creativity were to apply those traits in the pursuit of something other than the almighty dollar? (Notwithstanding that most dollars are not exactly ‘almighty’ right now … more ‘formerly-almighty-but-now-a-bit-soft-around-the-middle-and-considering-retirement’ kind of dollars. Whatever. I figure you get the gist.)

Well, now, that would indeed be quite something – the kind of something that has the potential to change everything. And, let’s face it, most people just don’t have the wherewithal to carry through with a something that big. Hell, most people these days don’t have the wherewithal to carry through with a half-hour TV program.

And yet these big somethings are happening. What’s more, they are happening because of big somebodies. As the Ashoka Institute (a global association of social entrepreneurs), puts it:

Identifying and solving large-scale social problems requires a social entrepreneur because only the entrepreneur has the committed vision and inexhaustible determination to persist until they have transformed an entire system.

So it’s the old adage: when the going gets tough, call an entrepreneur. Or something.

Ryan Wallman is Senior Writer at WellmarkPerspexa, where he is always working towards something big.

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