Social entrepreneurship – something we do all the time

It’s allways interesting with new words and phenomenoms. One of the latest discussions in the research community is about social entrepreneurship. In short it’s about work that is done by a public body or someone else with the aim to increase public service or manage public good in new ways. Of course, much of this is about different types of public service, but there is also an ongoing discussion about how the public sector can help for instance the innovation system in order to increase the number of innovations that gets to the market.

This, and much more, was presented on a seminar held by our sister organization Øresund Entrepreneurship Academy in Copenhagen in the beginning of May. After a very interesting introduction by Fredrik Björk and Jonas Christensen from Malmo University, we also met some of the enthusiastic entrepreneurs that has new ideas within the field of social entrepreneurship.

Some of the conclusions are that:

• the society has a responsibility also for bringing innovations to market

• working with change within the public sector demands entrepreneurs

• we need to include change in the mindset for public sector

The company ”A Question of” (echological t-shirts from Africa). Kasper Andersen and Mads Ulrik Greenfort told about their business idea that included a large social responsibility combined with a clear commercial idea.

Other entrepreneurs that we heard about during the day was Brian Sørensen from Promus, Carla Cammilla Hjort from ArtRebels and Mia Beyer og Maja Hedin from HeartRebels.

During the day we also meet the swedish minister responsible for Øresund questions, Christina Husmark Persson, when she handed out the prices in the "social entrepreneur" competition