Intro to Social Entrepreneurship
XLRI - Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur (India)
September 11, 2006
Social Entrepreneurship is an emerging field that offers opportunity to young professionals to create societal/economic value on a sustainable basis. According to some reports, globally this is the fastest growing sector and perhaps the only sector that is creating gainful employment worldwide.
In the academic field, Social Entrepreneurship is a recent but growing area of teaching and research. A large number of universities and business schools have regular courses or centers on Social Entrepreneurship, e.g., Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship (Oxford Said Business School), Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (Faqua Business School, Duke University), Catherine B Reynold Program for Social Entrepreneurship (New York University), Entrepreneurship in Social Sector Program (Harvard Business School), Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs (University of Geneva), Social Entrepreneurship Course Series (Stanford University), etc.
Unfortunately, most management students/professionals view social entrepreneurship as a 'by charity/for charity' venture, and not as a financially viable entrepreneurial activity. The purpose of the course is to expose the students to viable business models through case-studies, which are simultaneously profitable (though, not necessarily with 'profit-making' as the sole aim) and enthuse them to actively think about this as a realistic vocational choice.
In a country like India, where barely 6-7% of the economically active work-force is in the 'organized sector', there is a dire need to divert the managerial talent to develop ventures which can add/create value to the rest of the 'informal sector' (that accounts for 60% of India's GDP, 68% of income, 30% of agricultural exports, and 40% of manufacturing exports).
Lastly, in the past few years, we have had a handful of students who were actively looking for such a direction, but as an institute we have not been able to provide them with that direction/choice. Hopefully, this course will help bridge this gap a little bit.