Enough fair trade cafes and T-shirts. Entrepreneurs intent on changing the world should stop dwelling on copycat and non-scalable models and focus on becoming business model hackers.

In the same way that lines of code create software, and genetic code gives shape to physical identities, business models encode the incentives and behaviors that shape social and economic realities. Health disparities, housing shortages, environmentally ruinous practices and many other ails all trace their roots to malignant business model algorithms.

Social change emerges from disruptive innovations.

Viewing society through this lens also counters the default perception that we live in a bifurcated world–a social, cultural, and civic sphere separate from the economic sphere. Reality is far messier and more interconnected. A world subdivided between social entrepreneurs and “regular” entrepreneurs is one in which only half feel obliged to mind the impact of their ambitions. Instead, we should aspire to a unified approach to change.

Social change emerges from disruptive innovations–business model hacks that upend industries, enlarge markets, extend access, and stir power dynamics. Disruptive innovations challenge the prevailing economics of industries by finding ways to offer products drastically cheaper or more accessibly. This was how the computing revolution accelerated from million dollar mainframes to mobile for the masses, all the while changing every aspect of social life. The phenomenon, observed by Harvard University researcher Clay Christensen, provides something of an instructive guide for entrepreneurs who are serious about changing the world.

Solar rooftop installations have traditionally required upfront investments of $20,000 or more by homeowners, dramatically limiting the market to wealthy and willing households. Enter SolarCity, whose business model hack (the insight of Elon Musk, no less) was to front the full cost of inventory and installation, in exchange for retaining the tail of revenues for the next 20 years. With $280 million in help from Google, the cost to homeowners evaporated. At the same time, startup Solar Mosaic took a more democratic approach to the same problem, creating a crowdfunding platform that has mobilized $3.8 million toward rooftop installations so far.

These are not rarities. Indeed, there are great hacks fuelling at least a few trends that stand to alter society as much as they alter industries. Over three posts, we’ll take a look at some of them: collaborative consumption, the maker movement, and the Internet of things. These trends highlight opportunities for social change on a scale no social entrepreneur should ignore.

At the arrowhead of these shifts is the collaborative consumption movement. Its main hack has been to replace ownership with sharing as the main form of consumption, in domains previously (and even currently) considered impossible, and often through technology platforms.