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Sociopreneurism. At Harvard, they're handing out fellowships to 20 students who want to "use the skills of the marketplace to solve social problems innovatively," reports Alan Finder in The New York Times (8/17/05). "This generation of students expects more out of their careers, beyond the initial business success and financial gain that people generally assume business students are interested in," says Jane Wei-Skillern of Harvard. "They envision community engagement as a core part of what they do." J. Gregory Dees, a Fuqua School professor at Duke, notes that this interest marks a significant change: "I remember a time when a lot of folks who were interested in social issues saw business as part of the problem, not part of the solution."
Some folks "link this change to the spirit of commercial innovation that produced the digital economy." The notion is far from new, though: "Dr. Dees, who is believed to have taught the first course on social entrepreneurship, said he first suggested the idea when he was teaching at Harvard in 1989. He was told it that it was not an appropriate subject for a graduate school of business." The field is still emerging: "Right now the field is dominated by a hope and a dream," says Paul C. Light of N.Y.U. There are some solid case studies, however, "like the economist Mohammed Yunus ... who created an unusual lending institution to grant micro-loans, often for as little as $5 or $10, to enable desperately poor women to expand small businesses in weaving baskets and making pots. "Dr. Dees and other professors use the case to discuss with students why conventional banks would not grant such tiny loans and how Professor Yunus managed to make his lending institution profitable."
The professor's success seems to have inspired 23-year-old Uri Pomerantz, jozoor.org, to develop "a non-profit group to create jobs on the West Bank and Gaza by making very small loans." Uri comments: "Economics is not the full issue or the core issue ... but if you can't solve the economic issues, you are not going to have peace." Another student, 24-year-old Rob Lucas, created a website, The Teacher's Lounge, "to help teachers collaborate on lesson plans," and a third, Jolie Delja, also 24, hopes to open a center "to advise teenage girls of the risks of drinking and smoking if they become pregnant." Their fellowships were made possible by a "$10 million dollar gift from the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation," cbrf.org, whose founder, appropriately enough, "built a fortune by creating a company that provides college loans to students ineligible for government loans."
Aquarian Ceo's. "I think leadership is more important than strategy, and I say that as a former McKinsey guy," admits James Citrin, of SpencerStuart, as quoted by Linda Tischler in Fast Company (Sep 05). What he means is, the autocratic Philip Purcell, the meglomanic Jeffrey Eisner, and the "queen of keynote" (that would be Carly Fiona) are "out" of management "style." It's guys like Terry Semel of Yahoo and Ed Zander of Motorola who are "in," according to James (whose search firm happened to place both ceo's). "Strategy is important," adds James, "but the same strategy executed by two different leaders will have dramatically different results." D'oh.
The "news" is that the strongest leaders are those with "the highest ethical standards, who can lead by example, and who can build a strong effective team around him or her," says Sydney Finkelstein of Dartmouth's Tuck School. "Those are the hot buttons now," he says, "rather than the cowboy riding in to provide the magic answer for the company." They are, as Linda Tischler coins it, "Aquarian Ceo's -- "farsighted, tolerant, humane and practical. And they have the courage of their convictions, even when it means staring down myopic criticism from Wall Street." They include Jim Senegal of Costco, Dave Neeleman of JetBlue, John Mackey of Whole Foods and Brad Anderson of Best Buy. "People are expecting more from the companies they're working for, more from the companies they're doing business with, and more from the companies they're buying from," comments Raj Sisodia, a marketing prof at Bentley College.
Along with Jag Sheth of Emory University and David Wolf (a writer), Raj "completed a study of companies" that will be the basis of a forthcoming book called "Firms of Endearment" (Wharton). What Raj and Jag ended up with is a grand total of 35 companies that scored well on "human performance" issues, such as how they "treat suppliers, environmentalists and their communities." They also factored in the inspiration quotient of their ceo's. Bottom line is, when they threw those findings up against "financial performance, they found that the public companies in their sample returned 758 percent over 10 years, versus 128 percent for the S&P 500. Over the past five years -- a particularly tough period during which the S&P lost 13 percent -- these firms returned 205 percent."
Tim Manners, editor
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