"Entrepreneurship for Social Innovation: An approach based in the Humanities and Design Thinking"

Entrepreneurship education at the undergraduate level is most often situated in business schools. Their pedagogy involves case methodology and a capstone course in entrepreneurship towards the end of the curriculum. There is little emphasis on the development of skills to deal with the wicked nature of societal problems. This article explores how entrepreneurship education, with rigorous course work in humanities disciplines and which embeds design thinking, prepares individuals for social innovation. We contend that such education develops the hard business skills and the soft skills – to live with uncertainty, ambiguity, communicate effectively across cultural contexts, create opportunities, empathize, design the business, and leverage failures – necessary to create sustained social, cultural and environmental value. We begin by outlining the characteristics of social innovation and the importance of entrepreneurship to promote it, followed by discussion of a model which addresses the lacunae of
current entrepreneurship education with regards to social innovation.