Cognisant that businesses of any kind ought to generate profit, Dr Paul Igwe, Senior Lecturer in Strategy and Enterprise and Programme Leader in the University of Lincoln’s Department of Management, in the United Kingdom, states that social entrepreneurship is a direct response to social development needs and is therefore a problem-solving social responsibility.
He was speaking at the recent annual Executive Leadership Workshop (ELW) of the Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE) Programme in Cape Town.
Sharing an International Perspective on Social Entrepreneurship, Dr Igwe said social entrepreneurship ideas should be about providing solutions to problems within communities, universities and the broader higher education sector. He emphasised that these value propositions ought to be innovative, adding that most social change initiatives today are required to be market and community-oriented, creating unique value. This, he posited, is one of the systemic and strategic approaches to organisational sustainability.