The entrepreneurship wave of the 21st Century, inspired in part by the boom in tech startups, is now well-established in university education in many nations including Canada. With the emergence of social entrepreneurship, an even better fit has been found between educational goals and a movement designed to focus entrepreneurship on social needs. Definitions of social entrepreneurship vary and can include both commercial and nonprofit approaches. The diversity of the movement in Canada is reflected in a variety of courses, special programs and even university degrees.
Social entrepreneurship and universities
Social entrepreneurship is an emerging approach to bringing social change through the use of business skills. While it is now used to embrace a wide range of businesses and organizations, including both for profit and nonprofit enterprises, social entrepreneurship initially caught media attention with a focus on for profit startups with a social change mission. As the movement has grown so has the perspective and now social entrepreneurship is as much about bringing commercial business skills to the nonprofit world as it is about a commercial approach to tasks traditionally left to nonprofits.
This mix of elements is a strong fit for post-secondary educational trends encouraging interdisciplinary and educational activities with a direct and positive effect on the world beyond the university. This mix also fits the need for universities to encourage creative applications of established disciplines. Of course, social entrepreneurship is also a great fit for students exploring their place in the world who require flexible thinking as the pace of change continues to increase.
Defining social entrepreneurship
A recent article in University Affairs examines a range of Canadian universities developing programs in social entrepreneurship. Regarding this development RECODE director Chad Lubelsky states:
“On some campuses, [social entrepreneurship] is already strong and very present…Its role is to provide students with what’s sometimes called a 21st-century education, a real-world application to their learning on real issues, and building core skillsets. It also helps create a more permeable boundary between the campus and community.”
Lubelsky describes the movement in broad terms defining a social entrepreneur as “someone who is starting things for the social good, and the container – be it a business, co-op, not-for-profit or charity – is secondary.” This definition fits the emphasis of RECODE on “social innovation,” one that emphasizes the social over the entrepreneurial in social entrepreneurship.
A lengthy discussion of the definition of social entrepreneurship by Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg focuses on the entrepreneurial aspect of the term in keeping with their roles at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in the U.K. They believe a clear distinction is necessary to “distinguish social entrepreneurship from social service provision and social activism.” Yet their definition makes many assumptions about the human spirit and entrepreneurial motivation that one might not be surprised to find in academia but seems a bit beyond the reach of the everyday business founder.
So, unsurprisingly, the discussion of social entrepreneurship in sectors connected to post-secondary education tends, on the one hand, to be so broad as to lose focus and, on the other, to be focused on high-minded ideals that seem to lose their ground a bit when facing the reality of every day. Nevertheless, such discussions and distinctions are a necessary aspect of the work of those who do not want to take terms for granted especially when it involves an attempt to affect the world around us.
Social entrepreneurship at Canadian universities
A variety of social entrepreneurship courses and programs now exist in Canadian universities. They range from individual courses and undergraduate programs to even a graduate degree. They are supported by university departments, institutes and external organizations such as RECODE. Students and faculty come from across disciplinary departments to explore and examine social entrepreneurship.
Here are three examples of courses and programs in social entrepreneurship at Canadian universities:
Wilfrid Laurier University’s Social Entrepreneurship Option is an undergraduate program within the Global Studies department under the Faculty of Arts. Their focus is on bringing entrepreneurship and the arts together within the broader context of the humanities and social sciences.
The program features three core courses as well as additional requirements. In the Capstone Course in Social Entrepreneurship, students work together to launch a social venture. As experiential courses, the program also works in partnership with C3 Innovation Labs, which connects the university with the larger city and community beyond.
Another program that takes entrepreneurship into the arts, humanities and social sciences is the Arts and FSS Ventures Program at the University of Ottawa. This very new program is combining an “entrepreneurship/social innovation model” with a project-based approach to enhance courses already in existence. Teams of students will work with community partners to develop creative solutions to local concerns.
Not only will the program be developed across department but students are encouraged to work with already existing efforts in entrepreneurial education. These efforts include a Startup Garage sponsored by the University of Ottawa Entrepreneurship Hub.
At Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador, an MBA in Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship is supporting graduate work. Claiming to be the only such program in Canada, the MBA is designed to help students “gain business skills through the lens of sustainability and social enterprise and develop the necessary skills to present sustainable thinking to business leaders and funders.”
The program is full-time over 12 months. It includes 17 courses and a four-month internship. One unique aspect of the program, in keeping with the cross-disciplinary nature of social entrepreneurship at Canadian universities, is that students are not required to have undergraduate degrees in business. Students from all disciplines are encouraged to participate.
The education of social entrepreneurs
Social entrepreneurship programs at Canadian universities may still be emerging, but they are already charting a strong path forward. Their emphasis on cross-disciplinary participation and on bringing entrepreneurial thinking to social issues is defining an approach that can be productive in many realms. Despite disagreements over definitions and sometimes overly broad perspectives, the reality of project-based education addressing everyday problems will bring much-needed perspectives to the world of post-secondary education.