// Social entrepreneurs

According to the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship “[s]ocial entrepreneurship is about innovative, market-oriented approaches underpinned by a passion for social equity and environmental sustainability. Ultimately, social entrepreneurship is aimed at transformational systems change that tackles the root causes of poverty, marginalization, environmental deterioration and accompanying loss of human dignity.

It displays three characteristics, namely

– sociality, i.e. it is directed towards public interest,

– innovation and

– market orientation.

Famous social entrepreneurs are, for example, Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing practice, Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, and Wendy Kopp, who founded Teach for America.

Social entrepreneurship as a term and practice became prominent in the second half of the last century, particularly promoted by Bill Drayton who founded Ashoka, although social entrepreneurship evidently existed before. It has reached both academic research and teaching in various institutions and, according to Nicholls amongst others (2006, p. 2), “emerged as a global phenomenon” in recent years.

Edit – links to further parts on socio-academic entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs – Agents of Change: Summary I/VII
Introduction II/VII
Academic Entrepreneurs III/VII
Social Entrepreneurs IV/VII
Socio-Academic Entrepreneurs V/VII
Conclusion VI/VII
Bibliography VII/VII

// Academic entrepreneurs

According to the report prepared by Altbach, Reisberg and Rumbley (2009, p. iii) for the UNESCO 2009 World Conference on Higher Education: “An academic revolution has taken place in higher education in the past half century marked by transformations unprecedented in scope and diversity.” Part of this transformation is the emergence of what Etzkowitz (1983) and Clark (1998) amongst others call the entrepreneurial university (character). Etzkowitz (2003, p.112) sees the entrepreneurial university as “a natural incubator, providing support structures for teachers and students to initiate new ventures: intellectual, commercial and conjoint.” Universities face a new role and self-understanding of economic and social development and are part of a triple-helix of linkages between university, government and industry (cf. e.g. Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000).

Increased spinoff activities are possibly the most prominent face of this entrepreneurial nature especially after many countries have changed their legislation similar in nature to the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Nicolaou and Birley (2003) distinguish between three types of spinoffs, namely orthodox, where both the academic and the technology spin off from the institution, hybrid, where the academic remains with the institution holding a part-time position with the new company but the technology is spin out, and technology, where the technology spins out and the academic has no further connection with the new company apart from potentially having an equity stake. Drawing from this definition, O’Shea, Chugh and Allen (2008, p. 655) assert that a university spinoff involves “[t]he transfer of a core technology from an academic institution into a new company” and that “[t]he founding member(s) may include the inventor academic(s) who may or may not be currently affiliated with the academic institution.”

At the University of Oxford the technology transfer company Isis Innovation Ltd., established in 1988 and owned by the University, is since 1997 “responsible for creating spin-out companies based on academic research generated within and owned by the University of Oxford.” Spinoff activity is, according to Tom Hockaday, Managing Director of Isis Innovation, “very much a collaborative process” (own interview) between academic entrepreneurs and Isis. Technology transfer companies at various universities expanded immensely and are one indicator of the increase of academic entrepreneurs.

Yet academic entrepreneurship is not limited to an entrepreneurial faculty. Entrepreneurial University Leadership Programmes’ like the one newly created in 2010 by the Saïd Business School are not only focused on how to encourage academic entrepreneurs but how to shape entrepreneurial academic institutions. Academic entrepreneurship in this broadened sense encompasses research, teaching, organization or more general: exchange; in other words: the creation of an enabling and encouraging entrepreneurial environment which facilitates interaction between and action of people.

Edit – links to further parts on socio-academic entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs – Agents of Change: Summary I/VII
Introduction II/VII
Academic Entrepreneurs III/VII
Social Entrepreneurs IV/VII
Socio-Academic Entrepreneurs V/VII
Conclusion VI/VII
Bibliography VII/VII

// Socio-Academic Entrepreneurship – Socio-Academic Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs are difficult to define (cf. for an extensive discussion inter alia Gartner, 1988). Yet, as Scholte (2005) pointed out, whilst “definition is not everything, […] everything involves definition.” For the purpose of these blogposts, entrepreneurs are conceived as people who undertake endeavours in pursuit of opportunities.

This merely is an – arguably (too) extensive – classification, not a judgment of who are the new entrepreneurs. The newness of new entrepreneurs in contrast to entrepreneurs in general, is due to either an increase in numbers and/or in impact; it is not just a prescriptive proclamation: who ought these new entrepreneurs be?; but a descriptive statement: these are or will be the new entrepreneurs – which at the same time does not infer that others are not entrepreneurs anymore.

These new entrepreneurs, these blogposts will argue, are complements not substitutes. Or, in terms of neoclassical economics: demand for these new entrepreneurs is high – quantity-supply has to increase; and: demand for more shaping is high – quality-supply has to increase. Yet, while the question formally is descriptive in nature, these blogposts will argue, that these new entrepreneurs are not only increasing in numbers as well as impact, it will also focus on the prescriptive side of the development asserting that they should be some of the new entrepreneurs. These blogposts do not, however, claim that socio-academic entrepreneurs will form the majority of entrepreneurs nor the group with the highest impact, but there will be increased agents of change of this kind – worth focusing on.

So, who are these new entrepreneurs? They are a symbiotic creation between the social and the academic: socio-academic entrepreneurs forming socio-academic entrepreneurship. They are more than just social entrepreneurs using academic knowledge or academic entrepreneurs acting socially. Five blogposts more to come: Firstly and secondly we will consider academic and social entrepreneurs respectively. Thirdly, we will focus on socio-academic entrepreneurs. Fourthly, we will  conclude. Fifthly, we will provide the bibliography. Enjoy.

Edit – links to further parts on socio-academic entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs – Agents of Change: Summary I/VII
Introduction II/VII
Academic Entrepreneurs III/VII
Social Entrepreneurs IV/VII
Socio-Academic Entrepreneurs V/VII
Conclusion VI/VII
Bibliography VII/VII

// ENTREPRENEURS – AGENTS OF CHANGE

Changing of the guard. New entrepreneurs.

// Socio-Academic Entrepreneurship – Socio-Academic Entrepreneurs

Academic entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs have already existed for a long time, yet within the last decades we have witnessed an increase in numbers and impact as well as an enhanced research focus and discourse on these phenomena. Many academics already act with a social purpose and social entrepreneurs employ academic knowledge.

Yet, a next wave of new entrepreneurs is and increasingly will be what we entitle socio-academic entrepreneurs. Both ability and motivation are embedded in a new symbiotic nature. Rather than a social entrepreneur trained in academic knowledge or an academic entrepreneur commercializing research through a technology transfer with some social attributes, the socio-academic entrepreneur employs consciously academic research to become a social entrepreneur.

Academic knowledge does not just enable, and the social motivation does not just encourage; the symbiotic creation leads to a shift in the academic and social practice itself. Rather than acting with Mertonian disinterest socio-academic entrepreneurs act with specific social interests utilizing entrepreneurial means. They form a symbiotic creation and are not a substitute but an enriching compliment in today’s and tomorrow’s world.

Edit – links to further parts on socio-academic entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs – Agents of Change: Summary  I/VII
Introduction  II/VII
Academic Entrepreneurs  III/VII
Social Entrepreneurs   IV/VII
Socio-Academic Entrepreneurs  V/VII
Conclusion  VI/VII
Bibliography  VII/VII