The culture of entrepreneurship is changing and MIT is leading the conversation about it.
The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship has submitted two panels for consideration for inclusion at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) for 2013. MIT is a leader in innovative technology and entrepreneurial curriculum and would like to share its success and involvement in social entrepreneurship and collaborative workspace.
“We fully believe that MIT as an entrepreneurial leader in education and execution should leverage our diverse knowledge base and unique skill sets to help spread ideas and information to our fellow peers and entrepreneurial enthusiasts,” said Benjamin Israelite, program manager for the Martin Trust Center.
What could be one of the more popular subjects about social entrepreneurship, Do Good AND Make Money is a panel about the rising trend of entrepreneurs changing the world through social programs and making an income while doing so.
“Entrepreneurs are creative people that see problems all around them,” said Colin Kennedy, a consultant for the Martin Trust Center. “This is what leads them to ‘find a hole in the universe and fix it’ by creating a product or service that fills a need, and scaling it to solve a huge problem.”
In years past, those problems that yielded a profitable solution were of an industrial scale - work needed doing, widgets needed manufacturing, and in the end the standard of living elevated and profit was made. Today's entrepreneurs live in the world that emerged, and with those problems solved, see the environmental and societal effects left behind - sickness, toxic hazards, and waste.
“Brilliant people are working on these problems, and finding ways to do it profitably - because that means the solutions are sustainable and can scale to maximize impact.
You can do good and make money, and in fact we must.”
The MIT 100K Business Plan Competition winner, Sanergy, has built this model for their business and will be on the panel for Do Good AND Make Money.
The second panel submitted by the Martin Trust Center is based off of the Allen Curve, a theory developed by MIT Sloan Professor Tom Allen, that the physical distance between individuals directly affects their levels of collaboration. MIT is taking a revolutionary
approach to driving innovation and entrepreneurship through the creation of collaborative workspaces that promote and enhance collaboration. Dubbed 1 Coffee Pot, Many Disciplines: Why Space Matters, the panel will answer questions on how MIT utilizes workspace to enhance collaboration, how workspace affects intellectual communities, and emerging trends seen in collaborative workspace. Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center, and Sanjay Sarma, director of the MIT-SUTD Collaboration Office will lead the conversation for the panel.
An annual event, South by Southwest Interactive features five days of presentations from the brightest minds, networking events hosted by industry leaders, and special programs showcasing the best new websites. SXSW attendees and the online community review the submissions and votes for the panels to be featured at the festival. Voting is open until August 31, 2012; those not attending the SXSW festival can still vote for topics to be showcased.