Social entrepreneurship is a fundamental lever in the fight against the coronavirus, mobilising resources, goods and services with the agility of modern companies.
The expert of the Future Trends Forum, Diana Wells, president of Ashoka, told us in this video how social entrepreneurship has entrepreneurs who are committed to helping society solve the most complicated problems it faces.
Social entrepreneurship, as Wells tells us, has a vision of hope and change in the face of adversity, looking at the world with the perspective of providing solutions where others only see unsolvable problems.
The terms social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurship were first used in the literature in 1953 by H. Bowen in his book “Social Responsibilities of the Businessman”. The terms became widespread in the 80s of the last century, promoted by Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka, who coined the term social entrepreneur to refer to people who face in an innovative way, with all their energy, passion, and tenacity to solve the most important problems of our societies.
Social entrepreneurship goes beyond people and also encompasses companies that have, among their purposes, to provide new solutions to society and have social responsibility among their priorities.
The concept takes on all its meaning today. It is about collaborating between all the actors in a new way: as we said in a recent post, “We must learn to innovate in a global, supportive, selfless, generous way. To move from competition to cooperation at all levels: between companies, between nations, between continents, with multidisciplinary teams in Quintuple Helix models, which are the engine of social innovation.”
A large number of initiatives in the fight against the coronavirus have a social vocation. Let’s look at some significant examples:
- Spanish companies are mobilising not only money but also their contacts and resources to speed up operations for the purchase of protective material, respirators and tests in international markets. The agility of companies in the international market is usually greater than that of public administrations.
- Clusters of entrepreneurs, SMEs, researchers and scientists are being created to create ventilators with 3D technology.
- SMEs in many parts of Spain – the footwear industry in Arnedo, La Rioja – have been able to, in just one week, change their traditional production for the production of protective equipment against the virus.
- Along the same lines, large textile companies are changing their production lines to manufacture PPE. Companies such as Zara or C&A already manufacture masks and protective equipment.
- Perfume manufacturers, including Givenchy and Christian Dior, have shifted production to supply the hand sanitizer market, as has the alcoholic beverage industry, including Absolut Vodka and Brewdog.
- The hotel industry has turned to turning its hotels into medicalized hotels where patients affected by the coronavirus can be treated.
- Thanks to the initiative of an Italian doctor, Dr. Renato Favero, respirators are being created with a product from Decathlon, who has already given up his stock and is going to manufacture Easybreath snorkel masks on a large scale.
- Major football clubs are giving up their facilities to create material distribution centres and, if necessary, create field hospitals.
- The large courier companies have offered to channel citizen donations to the Health System.
- Financial institutions are implementing shock plans to help companies and families cushion the effects of the crisis generated by COVID-19, such as bringing forward pensions, allowing grace periods on mortgage principal payments or activating guarantee lines for SMEs and the self-employed.
- Foundations are also aware of social entrepreneurship. For example, the CRE100DO Foundation has created the microsite “Collaborate against COVID-19” to provide the community with a space for information and collaboration with the latest news on the management of the Coronavirus crisis from a business point of view, collecting the good practices that companies are CRE100DO implementing.
As we can see, the social entrepreneurship initiatives to fight against the pandemic we are suffering from are numerous and powerful. And the current ones will continue to consolidate and new ones will emerge.
Social innovation was analysed by the Future Trends Forum, where the experts participating in the meeting identified the possibility of a new trend of innovation, which in addition to creating sustainable wealth, was focused on alleviating social problems.
The current enormous movement of collaboration between private entities towards the common good, side by side with citizens, we believe will forever change business and social sensitivities and, ultimately, reshape the society in which we live.
