Discussing social entrepreneurship from three academic perspectives
Some weeks ago we had the pleasure and honour to host a series of academic presentations on various aspects of social entrepreneurship. Together with Kathi Norden ("Social Entrepreneurs and World Bank PRSPs: How to enhance Poverty Reduction with Solutions that work") and Hinnerk Hansen ("The Support Needs of Social Entrepreneurs") we presented our own master's thesis on social entrepreneurs and business angels at the Hub in Vienna.
After the presentations we had the pleasure to do a bit of Sparks with the audience before engaging in a lively and colourful interactive discussion. Those folks were eager to learn more, we can tell you :)
We think that all three of the presentations clearly showed how wide and still nascent this domain of social entrepreneurship is today. Despite an increasing number of studies on the topic there are still a lot of open questions to be researched in detail. Just think of the vast amount of different definitions (27 just in our study!), the different approaches to the perspective of business models, or the understanding of how and even if to make profits. Those differences in understanding also showed during the discussion, as the four of us had diverging views on these questions.
Overall it was a great evening with a great and very interested audience. We hope there will be more possibilities to present our findings. We think it's important to tell our findings and engage in the discourse to further determine and structure the field.
A big hand of applause goes to the Hub crew who supported us to set up the event - Dimitris, Chara, and Alex - and of course a great thank you to Kathi and Hinnerk, who provided fantastic and up-to-date input on the topic of social entrepreneurship.
Here you find Kathi’s (soooon) and our slides (PDF, 1,8 MB) as well as Hinnerk’s conclusions (PDF, 49 KB) for download.
PS. If you want to learn more or want to book us for a presentation or discussion, feel free to call us or write us an email, read more here.
Photo: Dimitris Kokkinakis and The Good Tribe
