I have often been intrigued by this question and because the readings for the class consisted of so many sound bites from leading innovators, I thought it would be worthwhile to post my two cents on the common (or commonly identifiable) traits of a social innovator.
First and foremost I believe is the ability to empathize with others. According to Alvin Goldman,
empathy is the ability to put oneself into the mental shoes of another person to understand her emotions and feelings.Being an idealist and having a feeling of justice in an unjust world also helps foster social innovation.
This is the same feeling that led Muhammad Yunus to question the injustice of 42 women slaving for the lack of a paltry sum of 27 dollars.It drove him to find a solution to this socially vexing problem. Though the Grameen story is well known, here are a few stories of the lesser known social innovators who were driven by empathy and compassion:
The second quality could be having a 'lunatic's dream' like Joshua Silver mentions or which Negroponte summarizes as "When engineers tell me something seems impossible, I say let's work on it until it is not .Even Muhammad Yunus started off with the vision of creating a poverty free world and was met with the cynicism of statements like "Are you crazy?"
The third ability i reckon is effective problem solving.
Finally, I believe, some social innovators are driven by a feeling of meaningless in one's life's pursuits. This again is best summarized by Mohammad Yunus in an interview when he says he was "Teaching elegant theroies of economics at a time that the country was hit by famine"
During my research for this post i also came across the following book:
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