Business Schools today have a blind spot: Business students are not prepared on how to become social innovators. Thereby the potential to foster the role that businesses can play in the movement towards a more sustainable future is lost. But how can business education be redesigned to better prepare business students to lead and scale social innovation?
What does it mean to be a social innovator?
“Without dedication, you won’t last in this field; it’s tough, and only true passion keeps you going.”
Social innovators have to navigate rocky paths to reach their social innovation goals. Change can be slow, and resources are often limited. To persevere, the successful social innovator leads with passion rooted in principles of compassion and empathy. Furthermore, the social innovator is inquisitive in nature, always looking for innovative and creative solutions to the problems and challenges they encounter along the way. These qualities make them resilient and adaptable in environments that are not always easy to navigate. But even when a social innovator has all of these characteristics, big successes are not achieved alone. Social innovators thrive in diverse teams and connect with relevant communities to reach shared successes.
What skills does the social innovator need?
“Social innovation needs to focus on building sustainable structures [businesses] within communities. Although there’s no single approach; each enterprise must adapt to its environment.”
Social innovators require strong financial, technical and interpersonal skills to turn ideas into marketable solutions. Knowledge about research methods is key in understanding the issues that they are trying to solve and financial literacy is needed to ensure the viability of their projects. Furthermore, solutions need to be embedded in context, and social innovators need to build strong and diverse teams and partnerships to navigate scarce resource landscapes and ensure adaptability and resilience. To sell their solutions, social innovators also need to be compelling storytellers, transforming mission statements into captivating narratives of positive and sustainable change. To learn more about social innovation skills, read this blogpost.
New Teaching Methods: “Pracademics”
“social innovation is reated as an add-on, so it’s often not given the space it requires to be effective.”
A major criticism raised by experts is the disconnect between business school curricula and real world applicability. Business schools need to help students on their path to become visionaries with integrity ; True leaders of change instead of followers of outdated, unsustainable practices. Curricula should therefore prioritise the development of critical thinking and pragmatic mindsets, contributing to student’s confidence in addressing real-life problems. Community-service learning, experimental learning, and problem-based learning are examples of promising methods to reach this goal.
“Pracademics” is the key term defining the teaching methods of the future. A pracademic is a professional who bridges the worlds of practice and academia by combining real-world experience with scholarly research and theory. Pracademics apply academic knowledge to practical challenges while also bringing insights from hands-on work back into teaching, research, and policy discussions. This dual perspective allows them to produce work that is both rigorous and directly applicable to real-world contexts. As a result, pracademics help close the gap between theory and practice.
But rethinking business schools does not come without hurdles. Major obstacles in the transformation of business education in Europe include rigid structures and traditional mindsets, in addition to limited resources of personnel and funding that many universities deal with. Social innovation often does not make the cut. However, business schools need to recognise the need for a business education that prioritises social innovation and holistic teaching methods. More adaptable structures are required to empower educators and administrators to lead this transformation, and sustainable partnerships between universities can aid to facilitate this goal.
Business schools have the potential to create tomorrow’s changemakers. The solutions are there. Now, theory has to be translated into practice.
Learn more
The ESIC Project addresses business education for social innovation, aiming to upskill and reskill the European workforce, and thereby contributing to the transitions necessary for a social economy. The academic article “Rethinking Business Schools: Future Proofing Leaders Through Social Innovation” by P. Eiselein, B. Oers, D. Couckuyt, and M. Langenus is part of the ESIC project, gathering and analysing perspectives of various key stakeholders to identify what skills successful social innovators need and how business schools can teach them.
Stay tuned here to learn more about the ESIC project and receive the latest updates on social innovation education in Europe.