Coaching Commons: The New York Times: M.B.A.’s Guide Socially Concerned Entrepreneurs
November 2, 2009 – The New York Times – New York, NY, US
As questions go, it was short and to the point: “If you are so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
That challenge, splashed across her daughter’s T-shirt, inspired Una Ryan to leave a medical research career, developing vaccines, to start her own business.
“Being a medical researcher, I changed that statement to say, if you are so smart, why haven’t you saved more lives?,” said Ms. Ryan, at a lunch in Paris last month honoring finalists in this year’s Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, an annual competition for women entrepreneurs. Ms. Ryan was one of five winners of this year’s awards.
Insead has sponsored the awards for the past three years, tuning in to a growing interest in social entrepreneurship among its students as business graduates everywhere react to the worst recession since the Great Depression and the prospects of a jobless recovery.
“The coaching program has been fully integrated into Insead’s M.B.A. curriculum as ‘entrepreneurial field study,’” said Loïc Sadoulet, an affiliate professor of economics at Insead who served on the Cartier Awards jury panel, in an interview in Paris.
