Every so often, a society leaps forward to a fundamentally 'new equilibrium': the status quo is left behind - even if it had held for centuries. The revolutionary thinkers leading the charge powerful new ways to structure our systems, fundamentally altering how they work. This, write the authors, is the realm of the social entrepreneur. In this article they describe how one such duo of intrepid thinkers and actors went about creating transformative change in Africa. They describe the progress made by Riders for Health to bring healthcare to the furthest regions of rural Africa in a dependable, sustainable manner. In the end, they show that for social entrepreneurs, it is not enough to imagine a way to reduce suffering: their vision is for systemic change. It shifts an existing equilibrium to a new one - one that ensures an optimal new condition for those who had been disadvantaged by the prior state.

Social entrepreneurship has emerged over the past several decades as a way to identify and bring about potentially transformative societal improvements. Ventures in this realm are usually intended to benefit economically marginalized segments of society that can't transform their prospects without help. But the endeavors should be financially sustainable, because there's no guarantee that subsidies from taxpayers or charitable givers will continue indefinitely. Grameen Bank is a famous example of a social venture that met both goals. In studying the winners of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the authors found that they all focus on changing two features of an existing system: the economic actors involved and the enabling technology applied. For example, the children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi realized that reaching ethically concerned consumers through Rugmark (now GoodWeave International) could help foil exploitative labor brokers in India's carpet weaving industry. And through the Kiva platform, Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley enabled small-scale lenders in wealthy countries to lend to small-scale borrowers in poor countries. Today GoodWeave operates globally, and Kiva is on track to facilitate more than $1 billion in microloans within the next couple of years.

Most of the time, the world moves forward in tiny increments, as individuals and organizations hone and refine existing models: governments modify their services in hopes of producing better results, and businesses bring out the next generation of their existing products and services. But every once in a while-backed by revolutionary thinking-the world moves forward in a huge leap to a fundamentally new equilibrium. The authors show that over time, such paradigm shifts have been driven by two entities: government policy innovation and business entrepreneurial creation. But a third driver has emerged between these two poles: social entrepreneurship. The best part: social entrepreneurship makes possible equilibrium shifts that neither government or business could achieve on their own.