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Russian-American Seminar on Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation

On March 14th, 2016, an Russian-American seminar on social entrepreneurship and social innovation was held at the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation Studies. Jeffrey Robinson, Alexandra Moskovskaya, Alexander Chepurenko and several Russian social entrepreneurs took part in the event.

During the first part of the event, Jeffrey Robinson presented a global overview of social entrepreneurship activity in the USA, Australia, Kenya and South Africa. Jeffrey Robinson is an internationally recognized scholar in the area of social entrepreneurship and innovation. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation grant to study the topic of social entrepreneurship and the winner of various teaching awards.  He developed the graduate social entrepreneurship course at Rutgers Business School and has taught courses and seminars for Rutgers students in Singapore and Shanghai. He also co-developed the course ‘Doing Business in Russia’ for Moscow and Saint Petersburg students.

According to Jeffrey Robinson, by 2050, two-thirds of the world population will live in urban areas. Along with the fact that these urban areas are important centres of human activity, they are also centres of economic inequality and many social problems. Thus, social and economic development of these areas has become one of the most important problems of the 21st century. In response to these challenges, social innovators have started using new approaches and establishing new enterprises that have a positive impact on the quality of life in urban areas and bring positive social and economic results. Professor Robinson presented the preliminary results of his research on social innovators and entrepreneurs who solve the problems of global urbanization in emerging market economies (in South Africa and Kenya). He also compared these results with similar social innovation activity in countries with developed economies (USA and Australia).

Alexandra Moskovskaya spoke about the results of the social entrepreneurship research conducted in 2015 by the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation Studies with the support of HSE Basic Research Programme. She also mentioned the differences in social entrepreneurship activity between Russia and the rest of the world. Alexander Chepurenko presented an analysis of the current situation of small and medium entreprises in Russia as seen through the theory of entrepreneurship.

During the second part of the seminar, several Russian entrepreneurs presented their projects.