Nearly a year after university President Wallace Loh’s inaugural address in which he pledged to foster a more innovative campus, plans for a new center that would expand innovative efforts beyond the traditional business and technology sectors realms is officially in the works.

Although specific plans for the center — including who will lead it and how many new courses will be offered to students — are not yet concrete, Loh said he hopes to announce details by the end of the semester. While it’s too early to determine whether officials would require incoming students to complete a class in innovation tailored to their field of study, Loh said all students should be required to learn innovation in some capacity before they graduate.

The goal of the center, officials said, is to extend research and innovation to fields that are not typically associated with entrepreneurial pursuits, such as the social sciences or public policy.

“In the 21st century, we can no longer just be a research university,” Loh said. “Your obligation is not just to create new knowledge; your obligation, if it’s what you want to do, is to create this new knowledge, this new idea, into a new business, into a commercializable product.”

Vice President for Research Patrick O’Shea said incorporating research and innovation to all university departments isn’t just about encouraging the creation of businesses, but about training students and faculty to craft ways to use education to improve society as a whole.

“It’s the difference between being educated as an explorer or trained as a tourist,” he said. “The future requires us to have leaders, or explorers, who can push the boundaries of knowledge forward. … It’s about creating students who are innovators, who will observe what they see around them, question it, analyze it and innovate and act upon it.”

The center will contribute to the university’s efforts to meet the University System of Maryland’s goal of creating 100 new university companies in the next decade, which is outlined in the system’s strategic plan.

The university has three centers that focus on entrepreneurship and innovation: the business school’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship; MTECH, which focuses on innovation in technology; and the Office of Technology Commercialization, which deals mainly with patents and licensing.

The new center will expand the resources of these centers to the rest of the university, beyond science and technology. O’Shea said entrepreneurship does not always have to lead to businesses or products; he said he hopes to see researchers collaborating in areas such as social innovation, potentially using innovative techniques to improve a public school system.

“If you’re talking about innovation in policy, the goal is actually to change public policy, to change laws,” which can be even more difficult, he said.

Additionally, Loh said he hopes to reach out to graduate students and faculty about potential ideas they may have and to learn what they’ve been working on — instead of waiting for them to approach administrators — as well as emphasizing interdisciplinary research across the university.

“We need to be proactive and go out and find ideas rather than sit in our office and wait until people come to us,” Loh said.

While officials may consider requiring students to take an entrepreneurship and innovation class in the future, O’Shea said the purpose is not to add another graduation requirement but to provide students in all disciplines with the tools to create solutions.

“It’s not as if there’s one-size-fits-all,” O’Shea said.

The center will not detract from the university’s primary goal of educating students, Loh said, but it will better prepare them for the workforce.

“If we really want to have an impact on Maryland, we come back to the basic mission of a university, which is not to create companies but to educate students,” Loh said. “That’s why I want every student at Maryland to have exposure to become an innovator and an entrepreneur.”

kirkwood@umdbk.com

Article source: http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/plans-for-new-center-underway-1.2788916

By
Sangeeth Sebastian

Last updated at 1:26 AM on 21st February 2012

It is easy for a university top honcho to get carried away when one of your leading institutes has just been elevated to the status of an IIT.

Banaras Hindu University (BHU) Vice- Chancellor Lalji Singh, however, does not believe in resting on his laurels.

The elevation of BHU’s information technology institute (ITBHU) to IIT status by Parliament last year was definitely a shot in the arm for the historic institution that nurtures ambitions of becoming a global university in the 150th birth anniversary year of its founder, the nationalist leader, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya.

BHU will roll out three new skill development programmes, besides courses in Leisure and Hospitality Management, Micro Finance and Entrepreneurship

Parliament’s seal of recognition, in fact, has enhanced the pace of academic initiatives being rolled out by BHU. It is all set to launch three skill enhancement courses in the new academic year.

Also ready to roll are diploma programmes in Leisure and Hospitality Management, and Micro Finance and Entrepreneurship, besides a certificate course in Health Care Management, all sanctioned by the University Grants Commission (UGC).

‘We will also introduce a number of new and market-relevant programmes such as agriculture and horticulture management, which has great employment potential,’ says Vice-Chancellor Singh, a BHU product who’s famous for pioneering DNA fingerprinting in the country during his long tenure as director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad.

The signals for management students from BHU are also positive. Dean S.K. Singh of the Faculty of Management Studies, BHU, says the pay packet of management graduates have remained steady, despite the turbulence in the global economy and its ripple effects felt at home.

Around 160 students graduate from the management school every year with an MBA, or an MBA in either International Business or Agricultural Business Administration, or the one-year PG Diploma in Business Administration for executives and entrepreneurs.

‘The opening annual pay packet for our management graduates is Rs 8 lakh,’ Singh says.

More than 4,000 management students have graduated from BHU since the university launched it management school over 40 years ago.

Some of the thrust areas in the management sector in the next five years, according to Singh, are going to be social entrepreneurship, rural and services management.

Agriculture education and research will be the focus of the academic syllabus of BHU’s annexe campus spread across 2,800 acres in neighbouring Mirzapur.

Management education is just one of BHU’s many core competencies. The university spread across an area of 1,320 acres with 32,000 students, including 600 from 48 countries, 2,500 research scholars, 1,800 teachers, 131 departments and 30 deans is one of India’s vibrant multi-disciplinary institutions.

Its research programmes extend from biotechnology, molecular plant breeding and tissue culture to stem cells, bone marrow transplantation, cancer and HIV/AIDS.

An academic programme conducted jointly with the National Stock Exchange is also under way.

And now, as the vice-chancellor informs us, BHU is in the process of sealing MoUs with the School of Business, Claflin University (South Carolina, USA) and Lausitz University of Applied Sciences (Brandenburg, Germany).

The IT BHU, which is celebrating its new-found IIT status, comprises 13 departments, three interdisciplinary schools, three centres of advanced studies, and offers a four-year B.Tech. in ceramic, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, electronics, mechanical, metallurgical and mining engineering, as well as a B.Pharm. progamme. You must clear the IIT-JEE to be eligible for admission.

‘At the end of the day,’ says Lalji Singh, ‘we don’t want to be known just as a university that churns out engineers, doctors, executives and entrepreneurs. We want to be known as an institution that produces men and women of character and probity.’

The university’s founder would have approved of this sentiment.

Hot seat: Father E. Abraham

The XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur, is on a high.

The annual campus placement has seen the school completing the
process in just four days with global pharmaceutical major Novartis AG making the highest offer at $150,000 per annum. In an interview to Sangeeth Sebastian, the director of XLRI, Father E. Abraham explains how the school has remained immune to fears of economic downturn.

Is a 100 per cent campus placement for your students indicative of how recession fears are often exaggerated?

There is obviously a slowdown in the global economy. Our high domestic consumption and calibrated approach towards reforms have made the economy more resilient and less vulnerable. The placement result is an affirmation that shaping future business leaders with a holistic perspective is the right way.

If that be so, why has there been a decline in interest among students for management programmes everywhere?

There appears to be a decline in MBA applications in European countries and in the US but in India, given our large demographic base, high-end vocational courses like MBA is still an attractive option for students.

Presuming MBA is still a lucrative option, what should be the focus of some of the new and emerging courses especially in view of the shadow of recession?

With a growing economy, we need to have more programmes to meet our economic needs. However, while introducing new programmes, it is important to develop programmes that have contextual relevance and induce students to come up with solutions to reduce income disparities.

Considering the earlier disproportionately large payouts to management grads, have salaries now suffered the slings and arrows of recession?

During periods of slowdown, many organisations go slow on expansion plans and consequently become conservative in their hiring practices. However, there is always a demand for talent since the slowdown will inevitably give way to economic growth. A total of 73 companies participated in this year’s placement. The highest domestic salary offered at our institution this year was Rs 40 lakh per annum and the average domestic salary was Rs 16.48 lakh per annum.

What are some of the new management programmes which XLRI is planning to offer?

We introduced a Master’s programme in ‘Positive Organisational Development and Change’ in partnership with Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, US recently. We are also introducing a six-month online selflearning certificate programme in ‘Agri-Business Management’. The course helps students find exciting sales and marketing career opportunities within the fast growing agri-business.

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Article source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2104080/BHU-charts-way-forward-One-Indias-universities-set-celebrate-150th-anniversary.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

(PressZoom) – NEW YORK, N.Y. – Cornell University President David Skorton and Provost Kent Fuchs joined New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg today in announcing that Professor Daniel P. Huttenlocher, the university’s Dean of Computing and Information Sciences, has been named Cornell Vice Provost and founding Dean of the university’s historic CornellNYC Tech campus, home of the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute (TCII), for an initial five-year term. He will be joined on the leadership team by Cathy Dove, currently Associate Dean in Cornell’s College of Engineering, who has been named the new campus’s Vice President, and by Technion Computer Science Professor Craig Gotsman, who will be TCII Director.

“Dan Huttenlocher and Cathy Dove employed their extensive knowledge, as well as their well-recognized leadership skills, during every step of the development of our proposal, and they are continuing to drive our effort to bring the new campus to fruition, expeditiously and expertly, for the people of New York,” said Skorton. “And the addition of Professor Craig Gotsman as director of the campus’s Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute brings added luster to this impressive team. Cornell and the city are very lucky to have such talented people leading this new – and new type of – campus.”

“New York City is quickly becoming the center of the digital universe, and today’s announcements will help us get there,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Under Dean Huttenlocher, Cathy Dove, and Craig Gotsman’s leadership, the tech campus will help us attract and develop more talent to energize our growing tech sector. And our social media platforms will give New Yorkers the information they need on the channels they want to use.”

“We welcome the appointments of Professor Dan Huttenlocher and Cathy Dove, to which we add that of Technion Professor Craig Gotsman as founding director of the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute. We have complete faith that this team can and will efficiently and professionally promote the ambitious program we have planned for New York City,” said Technion President Peretz Lavie.

Huttenlocher and Dove were instrumental in formulating and promoting the winning proposal and working with the city during the selection process for the new state-of-the-art graduate campus, to be operated in partnership with the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Inaugural instruction will begin in off-site locations in the city in September of this year, with groundbreaking scheduled for 2015 and on-campus operations slated to begin in 2017.

The Cornell Board of Trustees Executive Committee approved the appointments of Huttenlocher and Dove, Feb. 15, and they will begin in their new posts immediately.

Gotsman, Deputy Senior Vice President of the Technion, who holds the Hewlett-Packard Chair in Computer Engineering, will lead the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute (TCII), a centerpiece of the Roosevelt Island campus, as its founding director. After receiving accreditation from the state of New York, the TCII will confer dual Cornell/Technion Masters of Applied Sciences degrees, based on a curriculum with a unique emphasis on the application of sciences, entrepreneurship and management.

“We have an excellent team in place,” said Fuchs. “Dan Huttenlocher’s well acknowledged tech sector experience, creativity and leadership in both academia and business make him the perfect choice to lead the new campus’s academic enterprise and entrepreneurial initiatives. And Cathy Dove has proven that she is a truly outstanding, dedicated and innovative administrator. I am confident that Craig Gotsman’s leadership of the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute will produce the many benefits for the city, and beyond, that we’ve envisioned for it.”

“This is an unprecedented opportunity to build a new kind of university campus, focused on technology commercialization rooted in the very best academic research, with educational programs that tie fundamentals to practice, and strong ties to the tech sector of the city’s economy,” said Huttenlocher. “I look forward to working together with Cathy and Craig. We are already actively working towards identifying leased space for the start-up phase before we move to Roosevelt Island, gaining approvals for degree programs, involving local tech leaders in our planning, and preparing to hire world class faculty.”

“I am incredibly honored to be able to contribute to this game-changing enterprise that will have such a great impact on Cornell, the Technion and New York City,” said Dove. “It is especially meaningful to me as a Cornell alumna, who has always believed that Cornell should have a significant presence in New York City. I’m looking forward to working closely, not only with our faculty, staff and students, but with companies, alumni, our Technion partners and our New York City and Roosevelt Island neighbors. There is a lot of work to do, but I’m excited to be moving forward toward our shared goal.”

Huttenlocher and Dove will oversee the formation of the environmentally sustainable campus, whose operational costs are expected to exceed $2 billion over 30 years; the building of the campus’s expert faculty, planned to be about 280 strong in 30 years; its highly selective graduate student population, targeted at about 2,500 by 2043; as well as capital construction of the 2 million square-foot campus. The campus’s innovative academic “hub” concept will feature curriculum and research organized across multiple disciplines and directed toward particular sectors of New York City’s economy.

As Dean, Huttenlocher will have overall responsibility for programmatic aspects of the new campus, including responsibility for the academic quality and direction of the campus’s hubs and their evolution over time. He will develop strategic plans for the most effective ways of working with companies and early stage investors in New York City, and he will lead the campus’s faculty recruitment and entrepreneurial initiatives. He also will serve as a member of the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute Joint Governance Board and oversee the Tech Campus Advisory Committee.

“Dan Huttenlocher’s leadership has taken Cornell’s Computing and Information Science Department to new heights as one of the top programs in the world,” said Eric Grimson, chancellor of MIT. “Dan has a keen sense of how research and education can drive entrepreneurship and innovation, and I can think of no one better to lead the new tech campus going forward.”

Jeff Hawkins (Cornell ’79), founder of Numenta, Palm, and Handspring, said: “Dan Huttenlocher is an inspired choice to lead the new tech campus as he has excelled in both the academic world and the entrepreneurial world. The tech campus’ mission is to train the engineers and innovators who will continue to fuel New York City’s rise as a global technology leader. Knowing Dan and his talents, I can think of no one better suited to achieve that goal.”

And John Seely Brown, former chief scientist of Xerox Corp. and past director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), added: “Dan is the rare academic leader who knows not only how to cultivate great engineers and innovators, but also understands both the social and technical sides of tech entrepreneurship from his own years of experience working in the tech sector. Dan is a brilliant choice to lead the new tech campus forward as its founding Dean, and I am confident that his students and New York City itself will benefit from his unique approach.”

Huttenlocher will retain his post as Cornell’s CIS Dean, until a search for a new dean is completed. He also will co-chair, along with Cornell’s Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering Lance Collins, a group of academic leaders from across Cornell to build the academic programs in New York City, from the basics through accreditation. Collins joined Huttenlocher, Dove and Fuchs on the leadership team on the tech campus proposal.

“I have worked extensively with both Cathy (in her role as Associate Dean of Administration for the College of Engineering) and with Dan (as Dean of CIS),” said Collins. “We formed a cohesive team in collaborating on the proposal for the tech campus, and Dan and I, in particular, with the creation of the framework for the academic programs in NYC. And we will continue to collaborate on the academic ‘hubs,’ which are the centerpiece for the research and educational activities on the campus.”

Additionally, Collins will be engaged in developing the relationship between the new campus and the Ithaca-based programs, so that the university maximizes the leverage of this unique opportunity.

Huttenlocher holds Cornell’s John P. and Rilla Neafsey Chair in Computing, Information Science and Business, in addition to his post as Dean of CIS. He has been on the faculty at Cornell since 1988, leaving at various times to work in industry, including at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he founded the Image Understanding Group and served on the senior management team, and at Intelligent Markets, a small financial technologies firm, where he served as CTO. While his academic interests are rooted in computer science, particularly computer vision, he has worked in a number of other domains including autonomous vehicles (competing in the DARPA Urban Challenge) and analysis of online social networks. He is broadly interested in how computing and communications technologies are changing the ways people live, work and play. He has taught in both the Department of Computer Science and the MBA program at Cornell, and he has been recognized on several occasions for his excellence in teaching, including as the New York State Professor of the Year in 1993 by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), and as a Stephen H. Weiss Fellow at Cornell in 1996. He has published a number of award winning scientific papers, was named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation in 1990, and was honored as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 2007. In 1998-99, Huttenlocher chaired the Cornell Task Force on Computing and Information Science, which led to the creation of CIS, for which he was Cornell’s second dean. Huttenlocher currently serves on the board of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He received his bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan and his master’s and doctorate at MIT.

As the Vice President for the new tech campus, Dove will be responsible for all development, outreach and operational aspects of the campus, including areas such as human resources, external and student relations, development and facilities, IT, marketing and communications, finances and outreach. She will serve as the campus’s lead on its facility construction team, oversee corporate relations, student services and lead community outreach and programming, including K-12 programs. She also will lead the Operating Committee and serve as a member of Cornell’s senior leadership team.

Dove most recently was Associate Dean in the Cornell College of Engineering. Previously she served as Associate Dean for MBA Programs and Administration at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University and also served as director of Financial Management Services for the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Throughout her tenure at Cornell, Dove has served on, or led, a number of institutional initiatives – most recently as co-chair of the university’s Budget Model Task Force. Prior to her arrival at Cornell, she served as Assistant Town Manager for Arlington, Mass.; as a financial analyst and marketing planner for Eli Lilly Co.; and as a manager of Engineering Systems and Development for Anaren Inc. She holds a B.S. from Georgetown University, an MBA from Cornell, and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.

To address Dove’s move to a new position, Engineering Dean Collins is appointing an interim Associate Dean for Administration, to begin today, and he will be selecting and chairing a small committee that will be responsible for a national search for Dove’s replacement.

Gotsman joined the Technion in 1992. As its Associate Dean for External Relations, he founded and led the Technion computer science faculty’s Industrial Affiliates Program, a successful platform for promoting academic-industrial cooperation. In this capacity he conceived and developed an “Industrial Project” course, which allows students to perform software projects offered and supervised by industrial experts; and the “Lapidim” study program, which identifies and nurtures the next generation of high-tech leaders. He has founded and run two start-up companies, one based on technology he developed at the Technion, and he has consulted for numerous Fortune 100 companies.

Gotsman holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was a visiting professor at Harvard University and ETH Zurich, and a research scientist at MIT. He has published more than 150 papers in the professional literature and has been awarded five U.S. patents.

The Cornell-Technion winning proposal, announced by New York City Mayor Bloomberg on Dec. 19, 2011, lays out an innovative academic enterprise in the heart of the city that will fulfill the mayor’s vision to transform New York into a world hub of innovation and technology commercialization.

The Cornell-Technion proposal was ultimately selected, city officials said, because of the large scale and vision of the proposal, the long and impressive track-record of both institutions in generating applied science breakthroughs and spinning out new businesses, the financing capacity of the partners, the focus of the campus on the collaboration between academia and the private sector, and the overall capacity of the partnership to execute the project. In addition to the Roosevelt Island site, the city will also provide $100 million in city capital to assist with site infrastructure, construction, and related costs.

-30-

Contact Simeon Moss for information about Cornell’s TV and radio studios.

Article source: http://presszoom.com/story_172909.html

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Four seniors awarded Gates Cambridge Scholarships

Posted February 20, 2012; 09:40 a.m.

by Karin Dienst

Princeton University seniors Jane Abbottsmith, Daniel Barson, Daniel Strassfeld and Victoria Tobolsky have been awarded Gates Cambridge Scholarships, which give outstanding students from outside the United Kingdom the opportunity to pursue postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge.

In addition, this year’s recipients include Princeton alumna Rachel Bolton, who earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 2010.

The award recipients are among 90 winners of the Gates Cambridge Scholarships from around the world.

Abbottsmith, who is from Cincinnati, is majoring in religion and earning a certificate in values and public life. At Cambridge she will study for a master’s degree in theology and religious studies. Eventually she hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in ethics and enter academia with a focus on connecting theology and social entrepreneurship.

Abbottsmith received Princeton’s Haarlow Prize in Humanistic Studies her freshman year and the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence her sophomore year. She studied Spanish language and art history in Madrid the summer after her freshman year, and theology at the University of Oxford in the spring of her junior year.

In her senior thesis, Abbottsmith is investigating the relationship between love of God and love of neighbor in Augustine’s homilies on the First Epistle of John in the New Testament.

Abbottsmith has participated in a variety of extracurricular activities while at Princeton. She leads a service project called Knitters in Action that makes baby blankets for homeless mothers in Trenton, N.J. She is a member of the Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fellows and of the Human Values Forum. She serves as an academic peer adviser at Whitman College and also rides on Princeton’s equestrian team.

Barson, who is from Cross River, N.Y., is majoring in molecular biology and earning certificates in quantitative and computational neuroscience and global health and health policy. At Cambridge he plans to pursue a master’s in clinical neurosciences. He then hopes to enroll in an MD/Ph.D. program in the United States, eventually pursuing a career in academic medicine, researching and applying treatments to promote central nervous system regeneration after injury and disease.

Barson received a Nancy J. Newman, MD ’78 and Valerie Biousse, MD Senior Thesis Research Fund for Neuroscience award. He is working in the lab of David Tank, the Henry L. Hillman Professor in Molecular Biology and professor of molecular biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. The research seeks to better understand cell responses by tracing the chemical trail from neuron clusters to a single neuron using a combination of the rabies virus and high-sensitivity imaging.

Throughout his undergraduate years, Barson has served on the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad. He also participated extensively with the Outdoor Action program as a trip leader, CPR instructor and coordinator of the HEART Wilderness First Aid Program. He has served as an academic peer adviser with Forbes College and has been active with the ski and snowboard team.

Strassfeld, who is from Shaker Heights, Ohio, is majoring in chemistry. At Cambridge he will study for a master’s degree in the history, philosophy and sociology of science, technology and medicine program. Eventually he would like to complete a Ph.D. in chemistry and become a professor.

He received a Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence for his freshman year. He spent more than a year pursuing research in the lab of Joshua Rabinowitz, professor of chemistry and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, studying the metabolic response of E.coli to a high-salt and mineral treatment.

He currently is working in the lab of Erik Sorensen, the Arthur Allen Patchett Professor in Organic Chemistry, on a total synthesis of the natural product ineariifolianone, an organic compound typically used by plants and insects as a defense or as a pheromone.

Strassfeld has tutored organic chemistry since his sophomore year and is involved in peer mentoring with the Princeton University Chemical Society. He is a member of Terrace Club.

Tobolsky, who is from Philadelphia, is majoring in anthropology. At Cambridge she will study for a master’s degree in human evolutionary studies. Afterward, she hopes to examine how human evolution resulted in human pathology and to work as a physician researcher in pediatric orthopedics.

As a Princeton student, she spent the summer after sophomore year in France as part of anthropology professor Alan Mann‘s course “Modern Human Origins,” which includes excavation at a site once frequented by Neandertals. The following summer she returned to the dig before going to Israel on another archaeological dig for senior thesis research.

For her thesis, Tobolsky is examining the musculoskeletal evolution of the human hand and its associated power and precision grips, how that relates to the evolution of complex tool use, and how in turn that relates to the evolution of human cognition.

Tobolsky’s extracurricular activities include being sustainability chair of Cloister Inn, a member of the Community Service Committee of the Undergraduate Student Government, a Healthy Minds peer adviser, a member of the Alcohol Coalition Committee, an academic peer adviser and a member of the Princeton Opera Company.

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Article source: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S32/97/48O16/index.xml?section=topstories

Don’t think a business can make a profit while solving a social problem? Tony Muljadi, co-chair of Harvard’s 13th annual Social Enterprise Conference, wants to make you a believer

It’s hot. (Just like Jane Chen’s Thermopod, a lifesaving, low-cost sleeping bag designed for the developing world that keeps low-birth-weight babies warm even when hospitals lose power.)

It’s trendy. (Just like Lauren Bush’s natural burlap FEED bag, which has helped provide more than 60 million school meals to children around the globe.)

It’s growing. (Just like the mushrooms that are used to produce Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre’s EcoCradle, an environmentally friendly, fungus-based replacement for foam packaging.)

It’s social enterprise. And while it has its roots in the socially-minded work of such historical figures as Susan B. Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Margaret Sanger and John Muir, in today’s capital markets it is still a nascent field. But it is thriving, thanks in part to a compelling message that is hard not to cheer for: Making money and making a difference can be two sides of the same coin — a fair-trade coin made with 100 percent biodegradeable recycled materials, of course.

And #socent isn’t just a trending topic in the Twitterverse. It’s also gaining steam in the mainstream press. In December, Forbes published its first-ever”Impact 30,” a list of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs.

But as with any developing sector, excitement is tempered by fear, clamor can turn into chaos. And that’s why so many of the practitioners, academics and students of social enterprise will be coming to Harvard University later this month for the 13th annual Social Enterprise Conference: To get a handle on this rapidly expanding area of profit-minded do-gooders. Co-produced by the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the entirely student-run conference brings together practitioners, academics and students to discuss the current state of social enterprise and where it’s going.

In the second part of my two-part interview, I asked conference co-chair Tony Muljadi about the biggest challenges facing social entrepreneurship, the state of microfinance and what kind of social enterprise he would fund if he had a billion dollars.

Click here for Part 1 of the interview.

Reynard Loki: What are the biggest challenges that social enterprises face?

Tony Muljadi: Scaling and being sustainable. A lot of social enterprises are doing great things, but can only work on a small scale or need donations to do their work. I think the biggest challenge is to come up with a business model that allows you to grow without the need for donations.

RL: So social enterprises are different from non-profits in that they don’t rely on donations?

TM: Right. Social enterprises aspire to eventually be sustainable, where they don’t need donor funding and are profitable so that they can continue into the future. I define a social enterprise is an entity that uses market mechanisms in order to be sustainable and make a social impact.

RL: Could a non-profit become a social enterprise?

TM: Yes, I think a lot of non-profits use market mechanisms to supplement their income. Last summer, I worked at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. They are a non-profit and they’re now expanding their business by providing consulting services for municipalities and performing arts organizations around the world. And they’re charging fees. And this new element of their business is in line with their mission to bring the performing arts to the widest possible audience. This is an example of social enterprise within a non-profit model because they are using market mechanisms.

RL: You spent some time working in microfinance with BRAC in Bangladesh. What were the biggest lessons you learned there?

TM: I learned that microfinance isn’t the end-all solution to poverty. It has really opened doors for people to access capital and pull themselves out of poverty. But it’s important that microfinance is a part of a larger scheme that involves other poverty-reduction programs, such as health services, child education, and job and enterprise training. The great thing about BRAC is that they have this philosophy. They don’t just give out loans. They seek out the needs of the people they serve. Sometimes microfinance isn’t the answer. Sometimes it’s livestock grants or health or education services. Or all of the above.

RL: The world of microfinance has also been beset by some of the unethical practices that are common in regular finance, such as unfair lending and astronomical interest rates.

TM: Many of these problems begin when a microfinance institution goes public, becomes a big corporation and is driven by investors like financial institutions and pension funds that seek major returns. There’s a profit pressure which leads to increasing interest rates and severe lending practices. A better model for microfinance is either in the non-profit space or a setup where the borrowers are the shareholders. In the Grameen Bank model, 95 percent of the borrowers own the bank. Some MFIs, on the other hand, went public and then had profit targets to hit, in addition to governance problems. Lenders shouldn’t be coming to your home or place of business to threaten you. That’s clearly not within the boundaries of social enterprise. Governments can do a lot more to regulate microfinance interest rates and lending practices in general. Also, somet borrowers will take out loans from several different places and won’t tell those institutions that they have other loans. Instituting some kind of credit bureau mechanism to ensure that people can repay their loans can help in this regard.

RL: What makes you most excited about the state of social enterprise at the moment?

TM: I’m most excited about the fact that it’s becoming trendy. People are catching on and believing in the power of social enterprise. And it’s been getting a lot more coverage by the media. There’s a social entrepreneurship section in the Huffington Post. The Unreasonable Institute, a social enterprise incubator whose founder Daniel Epstein will be moderating our Young Entrepreneur keynote, was recently covered by The New York Times. Some people may say there’s a dichotomy: either you’re social or you’re an enterprise. But we’re beginning to see these elements merge. In the future, people will expect for-profit companies to be socially driven and non-profits to be more entrepreneurial.

RL: What worries you the most about the state of social enterprise?

TM: That you don’t see that many scalable and sustainable social enterprises. And without good role models, it’s hard for other companies to follow. Capital markets rely on profits and aren’t yet ready for purely social business. Those MFIs that IPO’ed had such a pressure to make a profit and when they didn’t do that, their stock price tanked.

RL: Who are your primary inspirations?

TM: In 2007, I took an undergraduate class at the University of Colorado at Boulder called Sustainable Business and my professor Janet Graaf really exposed me to this idea of triple bottom line. I had never thought about social enterprise before this class.

RL: If you had a billion dollars to fund a social enterprise, what social problem would you like to solve and why?

TM: I would fund something having to do with education, because I think education is fundamental to development around the world. I think it’s a human right to have a free or low-cost education through high-school. I don’t know where exactly I would deploy those funds, but I would deploy them in the direction of education.

RL: If you could enact a law by which all countries had to abide, what would it be?

TM: Free education for all.

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About the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference

Jointly produced by the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the Social Enterprise Conference is an annual student-run conference that is one of the world’s leading forums to engage in dialogue, debate, and expression around the field of Social Enterprise. In 2009, the conference was named by Forbes.com as one of the “Top 12 most influential and exclusive executive gatherings,” the only student-run event to make the list.

About Tony Muljadi

Tony Muljadi is a second year student at Harvard Business School. Last summer he interned in the Strategy and Business Development group of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. Prior to HBS, Tony spent a summer in Bangladesh working in the microfinance division of BRAC, the largest non-profit development organization in the world. He also spent time as a management consultant with PwC in New York. Tony received a BS in Business Administration with Highest Honors from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Article source: http://www.justmeans.com/Tony-Muljadi-Exclusive-Justmeans-Q-A-Part-2/51993.html