How Entrepreneurship Can Solve Society's Biggest Challenges

Transcript

Manuel Acevedo-Jaramillo: [00:17] From my point of view, entrepreneurs should be certainly helping to solve societal challenges that companies are not capable of doing. Why?

[00:20] Large established companies, they tend to have a mindset, and they have an inertia that is very conflictive when you are trying to see a new way to solve an existing problem or a new problem that is arising.

[00:33] The 17 Sustainable Development Goals were mentioned by that United Nations two years ago as the goals that the world should look for. What we feel is that students can easily harness on those ideas, look around for what is out there that could be a solution, and engage all their passion and energy in order to make it a viable model.

[00:54] Once that model is in place, there comes the challenge, how to make it grow. That's where big companies play a role because they are the key partners for the expansion. What we are looking at in Colombia, in particular, is that finally companies are taking a new look for entrepreneurship programs.

[01:14] Instead of saying, "This is something we should support," they're saying, "This is where the new waves of innovation are going to come from."

[01:21] We need to keep on working with our established agenda, but be aware of what is out there and probably incorporating those new elements, those new products, those new services, those new models of solving a problem into what the companies already have.

Filmed February 2017 on site at AACSB's Deans Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.