Trinity Social Entrepeneurship Speaker Series
Long Room Hub, Trinity College
01 October 2013
Thank you, Denise.
You are all very welcome to the Long Room Hub for what promises to be an exceptional talk. As part of Trinity’s commitment to serving the public good, our university organises lectures and debates on issues of national and global importance. Last night, for instance, we held a debate on the future of the Seanad, ahead of this Friday’s vote.
The Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship, based in our Centre for Nonprofit Management in the School of Business, has been particularly effective at organising talks through its ‘Social Entrepreneurship Speaker Series’. In its four years of operation, this Series has invited key international speakers to talk on contemporary issues including: loans to support local economies; revolutionising work opportunities for people with autism; and criminal justice reform to reduce re-offending.
I congratulate the Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship - particularly Dr Denise Crossan, who lectures in our School of Business, and has been instrumental in organising this lecture series.
The mission of the Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship is to create an intellectual ‘home' for research, education and dialogue on social entrepreneurship in Ireland. And Public lectures are of course key to this mission.
In the past decade or so, we in Trinity – as in other world-ranking universities – have started speaking in terms of the ‘three pillars’ of university activity: education, research, and innovation. Actually I am not in favour of the ‘three pillars’ analogy because it sounds too separate and uninvolved. I prefer to think of education and research welded together into a common academic enterprise permeated by innovation.
But whatever metaphor you use, there is no doubt that innovation is now intrinsic to our age-old mission to educate. Innovation and entrepreneurship permeate all Trinity activity: we speak in terms of creative entrepreneurship, and of student, graduate and staff innovation. We seek to develop entrepreneurship at all levels and in all faculties.
A fortnight ago I launched the Masters in Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship, which we’re running jointly with our partner, Goldsmiths University in London. And three days ago I was in a conference in Milan to speak about EU initiatives to promote European innovation and entrepreneurship by increasing the common working between the three sectors of higher education, the business community, and research and technology.
Indeed Ireland’s national policy advisory board for enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation - Forfás - recently published a 90-page report on Social Enterprise in Ireland, which testifies to the strength and importance of this sector. Among the recommendations for capacity building in the sector is a recommendation to: “change curricula (where appropriate) so that social enterprise and non-profit management are included in mainstream academic business courses.”
Because we favour linked-up thinking and interdisciplinarity, Trinity supports this recommendation – and indeed we’d go further: social entrepreneurship shouldn’t just be part of mainstream business courses but of academic courses generally. Social entrepreneurship and innovation has an obvious part to play in so many of our Schools and departments, from Philosophy to Engineering to Medicine.
Our mission is to serve the public good - and getting staff and students in all faculties thinking about commercialising their research for social improvement is of course a key way of delivering on that mission. Social entrepreneurship is part of the training in our Innovation Academy aimed at turning PhD students into entrepreneurs.
Our Speaker Series has helped us develop our thinking on social entrepreneurship within a global framework. We are most honoured that Sonal Shah is here to address us this afternoon.
To Dr Crossan’s excellent introduction, I would only emphasize her point that Sonal Shah has excelled in many sectors: government, corporate, academic and non-profit. This wealth of experience has given her a comprehensive understanding of social entrepreneurship from all perspectives. In Trinity we seek always to develop ‘joined up’ thinking and to move away from sectoral isolation, so we’re most anticipatory of the insights Sonal Shah can offer.
Social entrepreneurship is not an optional add-on. For anyone who cares about the future of the world, it has to be central to everything we do. To quote Robert Kennedy, whose thinking and social conscience look ever more prescient:
“But history will judge you, and as the years pass, you will ultimately judge yourself, on the extent to which you have used your gifts and talents to lighten and enrich the lives of your fellow men. In your hands lies the future of your world and the fulfilment of the best qualities of your own spirit.”
Thank you. I now invite Sonal Shah to take the floor.
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