INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Programme ’09

Through the referral of Rags2Riches’ partner and investor, LGT Venture Philanthropy, I got to know about the INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Programme. I applied through Hans Wahl, the Programme Director, and thankfully got accepted – thus spending the last week in INSEAD Singapore on this very engaging learning journey.

The course itself was led by Filipe Santos, Academic Director for the Social Entrepreneurship Programme – details of which I posted day-to-day accounts of in my past few blogs. The topics covered were a veritable mix of business and social entrepreneurship – tackling themes of leadership, negotiation, innovation, business models, accounting, and social entrepreneurship strategy/scaling up – as taught by a wide spectrum of esteemed faculty who are experts in those particular fields.

However, what really made this such a great experience for me was learning alongside “my classmates” who in themselves carried a lot of knowledge that they openly shared.

There was Marie So, co-founder of Ventures in Development — whose current main project is Shokay — creating livelihood opportunities for marginalized communities in rural China; Anant Kumar – CEO of Lifespring Hospitals — bringing affordable healthcare to the base-of-the-pyramid in India; Duke Diskul, Director of Mae Fah Luang Foundation in Thailand, working on integrated Rural Development. But of particular note is that this list is just the tip of the iceberg; My other “classmates” were also doing pretty amazing things — from hospitals on boats, social enterprise incubation, microfinancing through the web, empathetic advocacy for the blind, fair trade. Name the cause, and you would probably find a changemaker fighting for it in our class.

And I guess to emphasize this point – on top of the formal lectures and exercises – it was really the fact that it was a week of engaging in meaningful conversation, discussion, and debate on our field, social (business) enterprise, that made it such a meaningful learning experience for me. Whether it be lunch break fodder, a formal group exercise, or a case study exploration — hearing the diverse inputs and exchange of ideas was absolutely enriching, real-world lessons that got me to think on how I could apply it back to my own work in Hapinoy and Rags2Riches.

And the class didn’t end with the last lecture. Being an “alumni” of the course, I’m now part of the “learning community” of ISEP. And as such, i can continue the conversation, hopefully leading to collaborations down the road. All in the spirit of making the world a better place to live in

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under A Better World, Social Business Enterprise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.