2012 has been another year of impressive growth for social enterprise research. It remains true that research into social entrepreneurship continues to play catch-up with practice, but there is increasing evidence that the field is maturing fast. Recommended reads this year include the Acumen Fund and Monitor Group's report on social investment and Paul Bloom's book Scaling Your Social Venture.
This maturity has been reflected in the extension of social enterprise research from business schools to social science departments. This is an important development because too often the 'social' in social enterprise has been understood as self-evident – when the reality is far more complex. Does 'social' mean pro-poor? Does 'social' mean something different in the North and the South, and is it ideological?
The future probably lies in interdisciplinary research which can bring social sciences and management sciences into closer dialogue, and I would expect to see more of this kind of research in the coming years.
We have also seen a perceptible challenge to the assumption that commercial income streams are the holy grail of sustainability. The unprecedented growth of the social investment market has persuaded many social entrepreneurs to believe that aiming for profit is the only route to organisational longevity and credibility. Some non-profit social ventures should remain just that, subsidised by grants and soft loans. We know there is a lot of subsidised capital in the market (both nationally and globally) and this has inflated expectations. We clearly need a more diversified social investment market which can cater to both high impact non-profit and for-profit models.
In the university sector as a whole social enterprise is growing fast, catalysed by the Unltd/Higher Education Funding Council of England £2m support initiative. This has involved 56 higher education institutions from across England. Northampton continues to set the standard but other universities are catching up fast, including research-intensive Russell Group universities like Bath and Southampton.
The recognition is that universities have a role to play not only in sustaining local social enterprise ecosystems but in contributing on an international stage as well. The rising profile of social enterprise in the university sector is as much student-led as top-down; as traditional career paths have contracted and established economic models have lost their sheen, social enterprise offers a compelling vision of alternative value creation. It's not far-fetched to imagine that university campuses might soon be microcosms of a new economy.
My major hope for 2013 is for further investment in social enterprise among universities. If 2010-12 was the period in which a new wave of start-up capital washed into campuses, 2013 should usher a second development stage in which the wider ecosystem grows at pace. This means further innovations in teaching social entrepreneurship, more take-up of Nick Petford's £1bn university challenge, the creation of campus hubs, and more international knowledge exchange. A concerted effort by research councils to recognise the value of creative partnerships between social enterprises and multidisciplinary research teams leveraging technology and research knowledge would be welcome too.
At the moment we try to retrofit research to the needs of social purpose organisations rather than co-designing research to meet pressing social needs. Do research councils – who set the agenda – have the vision to change the way the game is played? I doubt we'll see much movement over the next year, but the pressure to demonstrate 'impact' is driving much-needed reform – even if the pace so far has been glacial.
Dr Pathik Pathak is director of the University of Southampton Social Enterprise Network. He tweets @pathik10 and blogs here
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