The Emergence of Social Business

In his social entrepreneurship presentation, Lars Hulgård offers academic reasoning why social business is needed more today than in any point in history. The professor of social entrepreneurship helps us to understand new ways of combining social with enterprise.

The speaker begins by differentiating between business entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. To do this, he references Harvard Business School scholars. The social entrepreneurship presentation shares that in business the goal is a profitable company and attractive return on investment. However with a social business, there is an entirely different set of motivations. Social values are at the core of the company and all activities are aimed at increasing their social value rather than personal or shareholder wealth. He then offers examples of social innovation.

The social entrepreneurship presentation goes on to encourage social innovators to address the issue of inegalitarianism in society by integrating serving the community as a core principle of business. He also identifies a problem: that tools of business entrepreneurship are dominating in social entrepreneurship.