Dialogue Social Enterprise & World Economic Forum

Having been a social entrepreneur for the last two decades, its heartening to note how the concept of social entrepreneurship has grown from strength to strength. I was recently at the World Economic Forum’s summit at Dalian and was very excited to be a part of some very interesting discussions on reshaping business and society in post-crisis era. Its increasingly becoming clear that a business focus has to shift from “money to meaning” to be sustainable and inspire trust in its stakeholders. Businesses have to become more transparent and collaborative and therefore we need managers and business leaders who demonstrate these characteristics in their leadership style.

It was also clear that we need to rethink the values in business and economy and make it more human and redesign business education that focuses on creating a more collaborative and cooperative leadership. I read Henry Mintzberg’s book on the need to redesign MBA school programmes and was greatly inspired. It’s a subject that I am thinking about a great deal these days and I believe we can develop the strong and intense medium of darkness or silence into an effective learning ground. The workshop modules with blind or deaf trainers can be a wonderful experience that can help future leaders to rethink and reshape their mindsets.

I am sure we will be able to create a blueprint to enhance social and human capital and redesign the curriculum of business schools, corporate and public universities. And if this is done with social enterprises at the heart of the programme, no one will be happier than me…