The Future of Entrepreneurship

As I sit around a table discussing entrepreneurship at the OECD I find myself surrounded by a good mix of dreamers and realists. We're talking about the future of entrepreneurship and I'm happy to hear that most people would like to see 'social business' at the heart of it. Are we really dreamers though? What is the reality exactly? And what's more, what's the reality of social business?

Filipe Santos, Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD France, works ardently to convince us there is indeed a difference between social businesses and businesses with a social edge and that on trying to forge the two the cracks will start to appear.

- At a certain point you will have to make a decision which determines your role.  Will you choose profit over the distribution of social goods for example. What are you willing to share? - That's what seems to make the difference between a social entrepreneur and an entrepreneur.

We try to cite examples to make life clearer and to give us some hope for a social business future. These include Wikipedia, the open-source encyclopedia, and of course Danone, who worked with Muhammed Yunus to create Grameen Danone Foods. "But are they really a social business?" One person cries. "Does it matter if they're doing something positive." Adds another. "Yeh, but they have the means to do this kind of things, it's not so easy for small companies or start-ups with no where near the same amount of capital". Another quiet but sensible voice asserts.

So what will the future of entrepreneurship be? Is there in fact a paradigm shift, as perhaps exemplified by Danone, or is that a false exterior? Will it in fact be so hard for companies with less capital it won't be a reality? What about the role of the crisis? Only time will tell, but at least around the table there were those who wanted it to happen and perhaps that's half the battle.

Les 72 Heurese de l'entreprise sociale: what's your next big idea?

It's the 72 hours of Social Business at Sciences Po this week and it's great to see this new movement take off. The idea is quite simple, I believe, although the term still seems to be open to interpretation. Some see it as somewhere between an NGO and a business and some see it as a business that aims to maximise it's positive social impact. Some see it as a business approach to social problems. Personally, I'd like to see it as simply the future of business. If the idea really takes off and starts to take root, like it seems to have already, then we can hope to see a real paradigm shift where most businesses value their social profits as much as their financial ones.

What's also exciting here is thinking about we can also get involved. It's the thrill of entrepreneurship which drives so many and can be used in such positive ways. That's what was discussed today at the workshop "Who's next? L'entrepreneuriat social étudiant". Listening to thoughts from SIFE France, The Social Workshop and the work of SPEAR made me think about just what I could bring to life myself and how many ideas are waiting to be materialised.