Where and When
Fort of Copacabana
Praça Coronel Eugênio Franco, #1, Posto 6, Copacabana
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Friday, Saturday and Sunday, June 15-17, 2012
Agenda: see program
Who can participate
The Forum is aimed at social entrepreneurs from companies, associations and the government, as well as citizens interested in learning about the transformative practices in the use of natural resources for the production and distribution of goods and services.
How to participate
Participation in the Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in the New Economy is free and open to anyone interested in the topic. Registration for workshops, lectures and panels is limited (between 50 and 500 participants). Click here to view the schedule and registration information.
Registration for concurrent events is not permitted. Simultaneous interpretation in Portuguese, English and Spanish will be available for all panel presentations. Simultaneous interpretation in Portuguese and English will be provided for workshops and discussions, with volunteer interpreters in Spanish.
Goals
Forum organizers hope to:
- Stimulate debate and deeper conversation about the future and the values of the emergence of a new economy.
- Identify and discuss the challenges and opportunities of social entrepreneurship 20 years after Eco92.
- Explore creative, innovative ways that social entrepreneurship can confront the most serious social, environmental, economic and political issues.
- Offer a space for learning and sharing of knowledge for entrepreneurs committed to social transformation.
Core ideas
- While pressure from consumers and legislation is great, it is millions of individual entrepreneurs who actually make the decisions about what is produced, how and for whom.
- Networking tools of the information society have expanded opportunities for direct cooperation and partnerships among entrepreneurs as well as with clients and their value chains. In addition, networking leads to increased communication, access to information and facilitates meeting the demands of business.
- The growing social and environmental demands faced by businesses today can only met through collaborative processes to create new patterns of production.
- Social entrepreneurship can meet people's needs as it preserves and regenerates the ecosystems upon which society depends.
Challenges
Discuss the value of social organization and the use of material resources, energy and biotic factors. Place a focus on ethics and respect for the environment in decisions of the public, private and non-governmental sectors.
Based on these ideas, seek answers to questions such as:
- What is new and important in social entrepreneurship and how does this shift the basic paradigm of business organization and relationships in the private, civil and government sectors?
- How to tap the potential of the information society to expand direct cooperation among entrepreneurs, clients and their value chains?
- How to promote direct cooperation to generate a healthy mix of markets and public goods?
- How to reconcile respect for environmental limitations with the tendency of business to continuously expand?
- How to reconcile serious ethical concerns with important current scientific developments?
What is a social entrepeneur?
Social entrepreneurs are people who generate promising solutions for society's problems through their work. They are agents of change who alter the status quo and transform our world.
Social entrepreneurs possess the following qualities:
- Ambition: They are concerned with important issues, from quotas for university admission to fighting poverty, from storage of nuclear waste to solutions for global warming. They are active in all types of organizations: governmental and non-governmental, non-profit and the private sector.
- Belief in a mission: Positive impact on society is their motivation. While profit may play a role, it is not the main goal: promoting systemic social change is the real objective.
- Strategic: Social entrepreneurs often work in areas not obvious to others: they seek out opportunities and new approaches to improve systems and society. And, like all successful businesspeople, they are intensely focused on their socially-oriented perspective.
- Versatility: Because they work not only in the world of business, but also in a social context, social entrepreneurs have limited access to capital and traditional sources of backing. Thus, they need to be able to mobilize human, financial and political resources.
- Result oriented: Social entrepreneurs strive for measurable results. The outcome of their work can transform lives, open doors for underserved and marginalized communities and spur change on a social level.