Incentive backed challenges attract "maverick thinkers who challenge normal assumptions" and make heroes of the teams who compete in these paradigm-changing efforts to solve significant social problems like building the ultimate fuel-efficient car or developing a lunar landing vehicle.

WHITEHOUSE: Live from the White House Summit on Promoting Innovation through Prizes, Challenges and Open Grantmaking | The White House

And misguided efforts to force them to create such cross-subsidies through regulation often create more problems than they solve.

FORBES: Should Your Kids Subsidize My Grandmother's Health Care?

Its efforts to reform the pensions system and the health service only scrape at the surface of the problems they are designed to solve.

ECONOMIST: Lumbering to the finishing-post

Social entrepreneurs are on a mission to solve problems plaguing society, but such altruistic efforts do not force these ventures into becoming profitless charities by default.

FORBES: Doing Good And Making Money