Project single

Social Entrepreneurship

In a joint collaboration, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Germany), Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and Intel Corp. have developed teaching material on Social Entrepreneurship ready to be implemented in high schools in Germany.

1314828000

The Initiative

Several societal challenges will be relevant 21^st century: skills shortage, youth unemployment, securing high education standards, health provision. These topics were traditionally within the responsibility of public actors, but the welfare state and social services departments cannot deliver solutions on their own. Also companies can contribute: they can offer entrepreneurial solutions in areas of their core business. But companies cannot provide solutions to these challenges on their own either. Joint efforts by all sectors of society (public, private, NPO) are necessary. Corporate involvement in education is often considered critical.

Companies investing in the educational sector – often summed up under the term of Corporate Social Responsibility – are often thought to ´invade´ education facilities with marketing or recruitment intentions. However, companies can contribute to the maintenance of high educational standards in certain aspects.

One approach to tackle these challenges is Social Entrepreneurship. Relevant issues of society are addressed by entrepreneurial ways of thinking. Social Entrepreneurship facilitates innovative and pragmatic solutions, without being dependent on external financial support. Social Entrepreneurship is widely associated with developing countries, even though there is a large field of action in developed countries as well, e.g. Wellcome, a German social enterprise supporting families after birth in order to allow smooth reintegration into the job. Both in developing and developed countries the term Social Entrepreneurship is more and more widely discussed.

But social entrepreneurs are still not widely known by the general public and particularly in the school system. Furthermore, business leaders and entrepreneurs are often considered to be unscrupulous, profit-oriented, prone to corruption and responsible for environmental pollution and wage dumping in third world countries. A more in-depth knowledge of the thoughts and actions of social entrepreneurs in form of a curriculum module could also alter the image many young people have of the business sector. This is the background of a practical project which aims at injecting Social Entrepreneurship in the educational sector.

Intel Corp., Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship set up a cooperation for the development and implementation of Social Entrepreneurship teaching material in high schools. It is scheduled to pilot the teaching material in one German federal state starting winter term 2011, details are currently negotiated. At the same time, the cooperation with international universities will be implemented to replicate this approach in Europe. A two-step approach (development/university – implementation/high school) was designed in order to reach this goal:

As a first step, university students were brought in contact with the topic. There is a lack of specific courses within university curricula. Thus awareness and conscience of students was created by offering new content. Courses were held with Master students at Ingolstadt School of Business at Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt during two semesters. These courses were made possible by the scientific support of two chairs of the University (Business Ethics and Business in Society, Pedagogics) and with an informational support regarding practical Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship of Intel Corp. Directly applicable teaching material for eight-hour modules in Social Entrepreneurship were elaborated as the result of the seminars.

As a second step, knowledge and skills are supposed to pass on to pupils that are taught. Teachers and pupils will get a sense of what Social Entrepreneurship can achieve. The topic receives a sense of urgency and increased credibility through the cooperation structure of a company, a research institution and a foundation. Networks between the company and the educational sector, resulting from their long-standing CSR engagement (e.g. the “Intel Teach” program that has reached more than 10 million teachers over the last 10 years), may serve as social capital available to both the company and the educational sector: on the one hand, inter-organizational barriers are opened up and mutual feedback is mobilized. On the other hand, results are distributed in different federal states. In Germany, the education system is part of the responsibility of individual federal states. Due to this fragmentation it is difficult to distribute the results on a broad range. However, the broad networks realized by the “Intel Teach” program allowed contacting Ministries of Education and involving them in discussion about integrating these topics into the curriculum of high schools.

In the long run, several effects are expected as the result of this engagement:

Awareness of Social Entrepreneurship activity is increased for future business leaders. They realize that many relevant challenges, in developing as well as developped countries, can be tackled by Social Entrepreneurship
Students are informed about the social engagement of business. To be aware of the potential of business to contribute to social welfare runs counter to a widespread image of business activity as egoistic and merely profit-oriented
Discussions in class and involving students and pupils stimulates the development of practical projects
Youth is sensibilized for societal problems
Solutions discussed in class
Youth is encouraged to take on responsibility towards society, to think entrepreneurial and take matters into their own hands instead of crying out exclusively for the state to intervene

We are now seeking international partners at university level to implement this initiatives in their respective countries.