Building an army of problem solvers – TVO.org

Aug 22, 2017

A social enterprise program provides training and job opportunities for people with barriers to employment

Over the course of the past year I had run across the terms “social entrepreneur” and “social enterprise,” both touted as innovations within the so-called solutions economy. But I still wondered what it all meant. The answer arrived in the pages of a book mailed to The Agenda by a fervent viewer.

“The solutions economy is essentially about solving social and environmental problems by using market forces … [It] criss-crosses the ideological spectrum, at times confounding both sides, more often winning them both over. It seeks collaboration, not polarization of sides. It is not an ideology, which is to say it is not arguing one economic school of thought is superior or that one political philosophy is the answer.”

Grand statements such as these, taken from the opening pages of Shaun Loney’s book An Army of Problem Solvers, can be easy to dismiss as naïve. But Loney isn’t some young idealist with no real-world experience. He is the former director of energy policy for the Manitoba government (1997 – 2002), an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2014), and a recipient of the Scotiabank EcoLiving Green Business of the Year award (2011).