CMU Institute Seeks to Match Societal Needs, Entrepreneurship
By Justin Sosne, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Feb. 3–Mahatma Gandhi once advised, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” This past year, students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management took that advice to heart.
They formed the Institute for Social Innovation, which aims to influence how the public and private sectors work together to address societal concerns. Planning for the institute began three years ago, when a group of academics, technicians and entrepreneurs studied the need for creativity in addressing difficult social problems.
They ultimately decided the best way to fill this need is to encourage individuals, nonprofit and for-profit entities to pursue social missions while ensuring that their efforts were financially sustainable — a dual pursuit known as the “double bottom line.”
“Social entrepreneurs,” the name given to individuals pursuing these dual goals, tend to be “passionate, smart and motivated, just like entrepreneurs in the for-profit sector, but they apply their energies to solving intractable social problems,” said Tim Zak, an adjunct faculty member at the Heinz School and the Tepper School of Business and co-director of the institute. “We want to inspire more people to pursue those dreams.”
Bill Strickland knows something about succeeding as a social entrepreneur. In 1968, he founded the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild on the North Side. Since starting as a small shop, the guild has joined with the Bidwell Training Center to become a multimillion-dollar organization, and Mr. Strickland has earned worldwide recognition as a leading social entrepreneur.
The Union Project, founded in 2001 in the former Union Baptist Church in Highland Park, is another local example. It consists of four social enterprises in one: a stained glass studio, a ceramics studio, the Union Fusion cafe and space rental. The stained glass studio offers classes and the ceramics studio sells its work to Whole Foods in East Liberty. And money from all the project’s ventures cover operating costs and help it achieve its broader mission of creating and sustaining community wealth by bringing together socially and culturally diverse neighbors.
Mr. Zak believes the Heinz School and CMU generally are in a unique position to support and foster more social enterprises such as these. “I know of no other academic institution that can offer such a critical combination of strengths — cutting-edge technology, focus on interdisciplinary and applied knowledge, a place that values innovation and cares about the issues, and a location close to a number of innovative nonprofits,” he said.
Indeed, the Heinz School’s Dr. Denise Rousseau and Marie Coleman, faculty director and co-director of the institute, respectively, note CMU faculty ranging from the fields of arts and robotics to business and international relations have collaborated with the institute. So far, 20 masters students have chosen to concentrate in social entrepreneurship since it was offered a year ago.
Lectures on the subject have proven to be some of the most popular at the Heinz School — even Dr. Rousseau signed up for Mr. Zak’s first class to learn more from an experienced practitioner. And when Jerr Boschee, an internationally recognized leader in the field, came to speak a few weeks ago, 125 students showed up.
Students aren’t just taking classes and listening to speakers — they’re doing research projects. Fourteen are studying the impact of social entrepreneurship on economic development and will travel to Oxford, England, in March to attend the Skoll Foundation’s World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.
And several already have made the transition from researchers to practitioners. Two recent Heinz School graduates are working with Steel City Biofuels, a new project of the Pennsylvania Resources Council that seeks to build awareness and the infrastructure necessary to support widespread use of biofuels in the region. And several robotics students are marketing a system for teaching braille in India.
“We are fortunate to have a place that inspires and supports social innovation,” said Amy Lazarus, one of the institute’s students.
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