Resources

Social Entrepreneurship

Select Books and Chapters

Jane Wei-Skillern, James E. Austin, Herman Leonard, and Howard Stevenson. Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 2007.
James E. Austin, Dutch Leonard, Ezequiel Reficco, and Jane Wei–Skillern. “Corporate Social Entrepreneurship: A New Vision for CSR.” In The Accountable Corporation. Vol. 2, edited by Marc J. Epstein and Kirk O. Hanson. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2005.

Select Articles and Working Papers

J. Gregory Dees, Beth Battle Anderson, and Jane Wei-Skillern. “Scaling Social Impact: Strategies for Spreading Social Innovations,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, volume 1, No. 4, spring 2004.
Jane Wei–Skillern. “Nonprofit Networking: The New Way to Grow,” Harvard Business School Working Knowledge (May 2005).
James E. Austin, Howard Stevenson, and Jane Wei–Skillern. “Social and Commercial Entrepreneurship: Same, Different, or Both?” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 30, no. 1 (January 2006).

Search HBS Working Knowledge for cutting-edge research by HBS faculty related to social entrepreneurship.

Search Harvard Business School’s faculty publications and research interest databases on social entrepreneurship.

Select Cases and Notes

“Even Bigger Change: A Framework for Getting Started at Changing the World” (9-305-099)
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
“Habitat for Humanity–Egypt” (9-307-001)
Jane Wei–Skillern and Kerry Herman
“NewSchools Venture Fund in 2004: At a Crossroads” (9-806-051)
Stacey Childress and Caroline King
“Note on Starting a Nonprofit Venture” (9-391-096)
J. Gregory Dees and Alice Oberfield
“Women’s World Banking: Catalytic Change Through Networks” (9-300-050)
James E. Austin and Susan S. Harmeling

Search Harvard Business School Publishing for articles and cases on social entrepreneurship.

Related Events

“The 2008 HBS Business Plan Contest Finals” The 12th annual HBS Business Plan Contest Finals and Award Ceremony (April 28, 2008).
“The 2007 HBS Business Plan Contest Finals” The 11th annual HBS Business Plan Contest Finals and Award Ceremony (April 23, 2007).
“Stepping Up to Leadership” A conversation with Wendy Kopp, President and Founder, Teach For America (September 7, 2006).

MBA Courses

Leading And Governing High Performing Nonprofit Organizations (Second Year, Fall and Winter Term)
Professor Allen Grossman; Associate Professor Alnoor Ebrahim
A large number of HBS graduates will engage in the nonprofit sector during their lifetimes. Leading and Governing High Performing Nonprofit Organizations (LGN) is designed to help students become highly effective nonprofit professional managers and/or board members. This course will offer an in–depth exploration of how to create, build and sustain high performing nonprofit organizations. Many for–profit leadership and management skills can be successfully adapted to nonprofit organizations; however, because the differences between the sectors are often greater than their similarities, the process can be daunting. Moreover, many for–profit concepts and frameworks do not transfer; therefore, new approaches must be developed for the complex nonprofit operating environment. LGN will identify, analyze and integrate the concepts and frameworks that nonprofit organizations need for outstanding performance.

Entrepreneurship in Education Reform (Second Year, Winter Term)
Senior Lecturer Stacey Childress
Entrepreneurship in Education Reform (EER) is an elective course for second year MBA students and crossregistrants who are interested in creating, leading, or supporting education enterprises with the purpose of driving higher levels of academic achievement for all K–12 students in the United States. The course architecture is driven by the following questions: 1.Why is there an entrepreneurial opportunity in a sector that is publicly funded and historically has been publicly delivered? 2. In what specific areas of the sector are opportunities arising and why? 3.What possibilities and constraints are faced by entrepreneurs across all the opportunity areas? 4. How might we evaluate the effectiveness of the entrepreneurial approaches at work in the sector? EER challenges students to consider these questions by examining the complexities of the existing education system, the strategies of entrepreneurial organizations that are attempting to address root causes of the performance problems in urban education, and the entrepreneurial behavior of leaders and managers trying to affect systemic change in both traditional and new types of public schools.