“We believe it is our right and responsibility to write ourselves into the future,” declare Walidah Imarish and adrienne maree brown. But how to build a better future when our societies are built on a succession of agreements we seem powerless — or unwilling — to question?

Entrepreneurial ecosystems can offer a pathway to citizenship, if we design them around collective purpose and social justice rather than economic imperatives alone.

In literary fiction, characters who lack agency are often relegated to the background. They’re somehow implausible or uninteresting from a narrative perspective, their passivity seen as weakness, or worse, preemptive capitulation.

Yet, in our lives, we frequently adopt roles passed down to us, slipping into fleeting identities of pretense and speaking words we might not fully own. More often than not, we opt for the well-lit walkways and the comfort of crowds. We weigh the odds, hedge our bets.

So when does this acquiescence become complicity? When do we abandon our agency and greater purpose to address perceived necessity? Rather, when do we not?

Detroit Sister Pie; Image by Isabelle Swiderski

Entrepreneurship as economic agency

Entrepreneurship is widely promoted as an arduous but nearly universal pathway to economic agency — the “open sesame” of social mobility. To foster new ventures, ecosystems surround entrepreneurs with institutional support, adapting to founders’ needs with flexibility rarely seen in other economic initiatives.

“In the beginning, we didn’t know exactly what we were doing because, for the people we work with — startup founders and organizations supporting them — this needs-driven approach wasn’t common in development cooperation,” explains Teresa Widmer, former Director of the SECO-funded Swiss Entrepreneurship Program, active in seven countries over ten years. “We had to find our own way, trying things out, and if something didn’t work, we just tried something else.”

The U.S.-based Kauffman Foundation’s recent playbook, co-created with over 1,500 practitioners, defines thriving ecosystems as comprising:

1. Entrepreneurs and their supporters.
2. Talent to help companies grow.
3. People and institutions providing knowledge and resources.
4. Champions and conveners.
5. Accessible entry points.
6. Spaces fostering interaction of people, ideas, and resources.
7. Shared stories and narratives.
8. A culture rich in social capital: collaboration, cooperation, trust, reciprocity, and common good.

Although ecosystem-building addresses diversity, access, resources, and capital, focusing solely on entrepreneurship limits its effectiveness as a broader engine for social justice — even, and perhaps specifically, when it comes to impact entrepreneurship.

Impact entrepreneurship is often perceived as the morally superior sibling of traditional entrepreneurship, but the notion that ventures can do good and do well is routinely dismissed as a matter of privilege. An implicit accusation that focusing on any metric other than profit is a luxury afforded only to the few, and certainly not those of us who live in the real world.

We’ve long debated over the right qualifier to turn entrepreneurship into a tool for social good without thoroughly questioning, let alone rejecting, the premise that demands such a transformation.

The “impact” qualifier is, in practice, a modifier. A belaboured blurring of lines between social innovation and financial returns that is both derivative and reductive. Entrepreneurship, defined as risk-taking for profit, remains central. Anything else is decoration.

Given this, the process of determining materiality in matters of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), for example, only emphasizes the modifier. Business is built for profit at all costs; any collateral damage is an afterthought. An inconsequential pothole on the road to unlimited, but precisely measured, growth.

The end always justifies the means.

But we’ll play the moral game if we must.

So, impact, too, is quantified and reported upon. “Measure what matters,” or so we say. But what does matter? Are we even allowed to ask?

Detroit Road; Image by Isabelle Swiderski

What matters.

The broadly unquestioned agreement that defines what is desirable and valuable in new ventures circumscribes our creativity. It binds our ambitions to neoliberal ideals: profit through extraction. Consumerism over the commons. Self-determination over citizenship.

We’ve tacitly agreed to suspend disbelief. We’ve embraced the construct of transaction as our own, as the smoke and mirrors that underpin our realities: money as the only reliable metric by which to determine our individual worth. Me over we.

In accepting this fragmentation, we’ve lost sight of the whole. We’ve weakened our ability to weave the interstitial tissue that allows that whole not only to function but to evolve and adapt.

When you work with people and you try to improve or enhance the system, you cannot plan a lot. It’s influenced by so many other factors, so you have to stay flexible and open-minded.

Philosophers argue citizens must transcend private concerns for political life; some suggest extending this transcendence to broader social interactions. John Rawls advocates that “the basic structure should be appraised from the position of equal citizenship.” From that sense of citizenship emerge solidarity and collective responsibility — beyond individual differences.

Gathering the fragments

Ecosystem building’s form of citizenship might thus resemble the social capital described in Kauffman’s list, as Teresa notes: “When you work with people and you try to improve or enhance the system, you cannot plan a lot. It’s influenced by so many other factors, so you have to stay flexible and open-minded. And then, you take the best of what is there and direct it towards what works for the entire system.”

As anyone who has engaged in grassroots organizing can testify, the complexity of the work is equal to its endless capacity to surprise.

Jakob Modéer, SwissEP director for the Balkan region, ties it to the mindset of ecosystem builders and contributors:

“When our experts arrive, they come to give back and to learn from another culture. It’s a fundamentally different dynamic compared to traditional consulting. For them, it’s personal and lasting — relationships and networks endure beyond assignments.”

Ecosystem building rests on a core proposition we’ve been groomed to reject: our greatest strength is our interdependence. It’s what makes collective imagination possible, a challenge less daunting — transforming an insight into shared wisdom. Not everything that matters can be measured and corralled for observation. By definition, emergence arises in informal social spaces, in the blossoming of trust, in the off-the-record check-ins. It’s the hyphen that lives in the in-betweens.

The self-actualization entrepreneurs seek mirrors our collective aspirations as a society. And if new ways of developing economic opportunity can feel uncharted, it’s because the path to our purpose has been willfully obscured by narratives we have been complicit in perpetuating — despite our best intentions.

But that collective purpose is, without a doubt, still there, waiting to be rediscovered as a way to define a more just future — if, as adrienne maree brown challenges, we are “brave enough to imagine beyond the boundaries of ‘the real’ and then do the hard work of sculpting reality from our dreams.”

Practical Steps Forward

• Foster ecosystem spaces explicitly designed for collective imagination and dialogue.
• Develop frameworks assessing ventures based on community and societal benefits, not just financial returns.
• Champion storytelling emphasizing community well-being and shared purpose as core principles of ecosystem-building.