Student Interest in Social Enterprise Is on the Rise

As I sat in Burden Auditorium on a dreary Sunday back in March, surrounded by upwards of 1,100 students, I wondered whether I was witness to the arrival of a new zeitgeist. The occasion was the annual Social Enterprise Conference, and the place was packed for the keynote address at 8:30 a.m. — well before the usual Sunday start time for most students.

I was lured to the event in part by the buildup it had gotten in the press. Weeks beforehand, Forbes named it one of the top business gatherings for 2009, alongside the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. Not bad company. Could it be that what was previously viewed as an idealistic (or downright unrealistic) MBA career choice had finally moved into the mainstream?

Actually, HBS has been a pioneer in supporting the pursuit of social enterprise endeavors, as four articles in this issue illuminate. They present the past, present, and future of the School’s commitment.

Credit for seeing the need to establish the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI) back in 1993 goes to former Goldman Sachs executive John Whitehead (MBA 11/ ’47), who served as chair of the SEI Advisory Board until April of this year.

This year’s Social Enterprise Conference, the tenth such student-run event, drew a stellar lineup of speakers and panelists, and the career fair filled the Williams Room in Spangler.

As it has for the past eight years, this spring the School named a new group of Leadership Fellows, graduating MBAs taking yearlong key positions with nonprofit and public-sector organizations at salaries partially subsidized by HBS. The School also announced the recipient of the inaugural Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, established to help recent graduates develop new social ventures.

The sum here is greater than the individual parts. Behind the numbers of conference attendees and fellowship recipients is a shift in attitude and understanding. Social enterprise isn’t about charity work or handouts. It’s about adapting management principles to increase the effectiveness of social-sector organizations. It’s about opportunities that span the globe. It’s about tackling big social problems and finding ways to address their underlying causes. And sometimes that involves practicing a new brand of entrepreneurship to challenge the status quo.

Just ask Elizabeth Scharpf (MBA ’07), recipient of the Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship. Two years out of HBS, she has already founded a health-care-focused social enterprise and launched a spin–off venture in Rwanda. “First and foremost, I’m a businessperson,” says Scharpf, who sees expansion possibilities in Asia and Central America.

Scharpf and other newcomers to social entrepreneurship are the grateful beneficiaries of pioneering work by people like Linda Rottenberg, CEO and cofounder of Endeavor, a global organization that mentors promising entrepreneurs in developing countries. In her keynote address at the HBS Social Enterprise Conference, Rottenberg observed: “A decade ago, when this conference began, those of us in the field were a loose band of renegades and ‘crazy people’.” Today, social entrepreneurship is taught on campuses. And Endeavor has been featured in Time, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Fast Company, and The Economist. Proof positive, she added, that “we’ve come a long way, baby.” Indeed, and the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative has been there every step of the way.

—Roger Thompson

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