How universities help develop good business models

How universities help develop good business models

With technology changing the business landscape, universities are seeing to it that entrepreneurs still include good social outcomes in their business models.

Early this month, the University of South Australia (UniSA) launched the Social Enterprise Hub to develop new models that merge good, measurable social outcomes to good business practices.

The Hub itself is a result of mergers between UniSA institutes, centres and other groups like the Australian Alliance for Social Enterprise, UniSA Yunus Centre for Social Business, Centre for Workplace Excellence, China-Australia Centre for Sustainable Development, and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute

Professor Marie Wilson, UniSA’s Pro Vice Chancellor for Business and Law, said the new platform brings “social innovation and entrepreneurship to life, while helping our students to study social entrepreneurship in action and participate in experiential learning.”

“We have great talent in running major projects and undertaking important research across a diverse range of areas in the social enterprise sphere from ageing, homelessness, and social inequality through to mental health, sustainability, and child protection,” Professor Wilson said.

“We also have great industry, not-for-profit, and government partners both nationally and internationally. But we saw a gap for a single platform that could join the dots, and act as a connector and amplifier. That is the role that the UniSA Social Enterprise Hub will play.”

Theory put to use

UniSA’s new hub also goes beyond developing models as students, academics and the community as a whole are given the chance to put these theories to the test through the Community Services Learning Project.

The elective course is applicable to all students across various disciplines who want to take part in over 20 community initiatives with various University partners like Red Cross and Mobdury Special School. 

“Social enterprise is a burgeoning and contemporary business model, applying corporate aspirations to community settings,” Andrea Duff, a UniSA Social Enterprises Hub member and project lead, said.

“The UniSA Social Enterprise Hub will help the University to fulfil its civic and social responsibility, bringing us together through new partnerships to innovate and make social change. So much more can be achieved by working together."

Already, Social Enterprise Hub members are taking on projects such as working with South Asian students to develop new social business models, a program where students design and construct buildings for Indigenous communities as well as for remote communities in Vanuatu to help local generate tourism-based income.

Empowering women

In 2020, two Griffith University researchers will fly to Ecuador and Mexico to provide a series of training workshops that aim to increase the success rate of women entrepreneurs there.

The University received a $39,100 grant from the Council on Australia Latin America Relations for the endeavour.

Hailing from the Griffith Institute for Tourism, Dr Catherin Khoo-Lattimore and Dr Elaine Yang will deliver the project which will train 20 tourism entrepreneurs with the necessary tourism business and digital skills from February to March next year. 

Attendees will also have an online ‘shopfront’ so they can reach out to international customers by the end of the workshop.

“Business technology training is often assumed to be gender neutral, and yet the design of marketing materials for technology training does not speak to women,” Dr Khoo-Latimore said.

“It addresses a gap in technology training for women entrepreneurs through a gendered approach in the design of promotional materials and training delivery.”