Source: www.sustainability.com
Topic: Social Entrepreneurship
Sort Desciption: LIVING ON THE EDGE—AND THRIVING Pamela Hartigan Managing Director, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship ( http://www.schwabfound.org ) Many people believe that entrepreneurship is about ...
Content Inside:
LIVING ON THE EDGE—AND THRIVING
Pamela Hartigan
Managing Director, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
( http://www.schwabfound.org )
Many people believe that entrepreneurship is about making money—the more the better.
Yet there are a growing number of entrepreneurs whose desire for money is to use it to
transform society. Whats the most exciting field in business today? I think it is social
entrepreneurship. And people all over the world are catching on. Consider the following.
One year ago, a Google search for the term social entrepreneur resulted in 2.3 million
references. That same search in November 2006 results in 16 million hits, an almost
eight-fold increase in only 12 months!
But Goggle searches arent the only barometer. Lets turn to our future business leaders
and managers. Many are currently attending top-rated MBA programs around the world.
Student demand for courses on the subject has mushroomed. Harvard Universitys
Business School was the first to respond, and its social enterprise program is now well
established. Across the Harvard campus, one of the largest student-run organizations is
focused on social entrepreneurship—with over 900 active members. Stanford Graduate
School of Business, MIT, Berkeley, Columbia, Yale, Wharton at University of
Pennsylvania, Fuqua at Duke, to name just a few, have set up similar tracks within their
respective MBA programs over the last five years. In Western Europe, the London
Business School and the Saïd School of Business at Oxford have responded likewise to
student interest, as have INSEAD in France, IESE in Barcelona, and the University of St.
Gallen in Switzerland. Top business schools in Asia and Latin America are witnessing a
similar trend.
And 2006 also saw the recognition of Muhammad Yunus by the Nobel Committee for his
pioneering efforts in micro-credit, which turned an economic paradigm on its head by
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