During the launch ceremony at Impact Hub in Belo Horizonte, SKEMA Ventures director Philippe Chéreau gave a presentation of this new lab to a large audience (representatives of the Belo Horizonte entrepreneurial and academic ecosystem, start-ups and students).
The SKEMA Social Ventures Lab will be set up at all the seven SKEMA campuses (in Brazil, China, France, South Africa and the USA), facilitating social entrepreneurial training through various resources dedicated to the subject, firmly rooted in applied research at SKEMA.
The initiative will thus be a powerful support to entrepreneurs in this field by stimulating not only independence and rationality but also creativity and empathy, and by developing specific skills in social entrepreneurship.
Several SKEMA teachers are currently working on training modules based on applied research work, focusing on frugal innovation, reverse innovation, the effectual innovation strategy and the ecosystems of entrepreneurship. All the modules will be assets for the Social Ventures Lab.
To illustrate this research, Eduardo Rossetto, a professor of global innovation and entrepreneurship at SKEMA, presented the frugal innovation concept to the audience.
Florian Fournier, a SKEMA graduate and founder of SIKANA (which helps everyone improve their daily lives through a community knowledge sharing platform), talked about his own career as an entrepreneur and the challenges he faced while trying to combine the creation of both societal and economic value.
Several reports have shown that social entrepreneurs encountered the toughest obstacles at the beginning of their careers (lack of financial and administrative support, information and documentation). The raison d’être of SKEMA Social Ventures Lab is to provide these entrepreneurs early on with methods and tools for their launch, incubation, acceleration, financing, and marketing strategies.
“Social entrepreneurs make an active contribution to societal changes. While seeking to create financial value, they provide innovative solutions for the complex problems of society overlooked by already established companies, civil society organisations and governments. These social entrepreneurs are coming up against ever more impediments to being launched, and many of them need specific support, such as suitable teaching methods, a dedicated approach and coaching tools, or particular financing methods. With the Social Ventures Lab, SKEMA proposes a high-value offer with unique resources in this field, linked with applied research, teaching and the practice of social entrepreneurship,” says Philippe Chéreau.
SKEMA Social Ventures Lab