James Geary | Jan/Feb 2009 issue
Jonathan Robinson, one of the co-founders of The Hub, a London-based incubator for social entrepreneurs, describes the financial crisis as “a great opportunity” for creating socially responsible businesses. The Skoll Foundation has been in that business since 1999, when Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay, set out to help create the alternative ecosystem of knowledge, training and policy support that he believes social entrepreneurs need to succeed.
A key part of that ecosystem is the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School in England, where scholars work to supply the theoretical and practical foundations for social business models. Founded in 2003, the Centre promotes the advancement of social entrepreneurship through teaching and research. One of its primary aims is to develop new metrics by which social businesses can be measured, an innovative set of criteria that takes into account the social as well as the financial value businesses create. “The goal is to shift the business school center of gravity toward social entrepreneurship,” says Stephan Chambers, chairman of the Centre. “We need to move the field forward, inspire the next generation and take seriously the fact that the failures of the market need market solutions.”
