EDUCATING SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS

The lead co-editor developed an undergraduate course in “Social Entrepreneurship” at the University at Albany in the fall of 2012. While assembling materials, he became acutely aware of the dearth of experiential exercises – somewhat surprising given the discipline’s recent growth in popularity . He decided to use a combination of comprehensive cases, guest visitors, lectures, and a business plan project. While there has been an explosion of texts as well as journals, Websites, and organizations, there is a surprising dearth of hands-on interactive materials that is common in business disciplines. As a result, we are convinced there is a market and educational opportunity to develop exercises and short cases (2-5 pages that can be handled within one class hour) specifically for social entrepreneurship along with complementary readings. Around the same time, a special issue “Educating Social Entrepreneurs and Social Innovators” appeared in the Academy of Management Learning & Education (2012, Vol 11, No. 3) that highlights the need for richer pedagogical materials. The second co-editor has extensive involvement in Africa where she teaches entrepreneurship and is very much aware of the tremendous need for cases, examples, and models.