Search results

Alzheimer’s is the most commonly occurring neurodegenerative disease and progressive cognitive impairment is its major symptom due to which the patients tend to wander and get lost in unfamiliar places. This is a constant cause of worry for caretakers and a source of distress to the patients themselves. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper presents a low-cost, autonomous, embedded systems-based wearable device for real-time location tracking using GPS and the concept of geo-fencing. The system provides real-time updates in the form of a text message sent to the mobile number of a family member or caregiver.

An alert is sent whenever the patient moves out of a certain “safe zone” area and sends subsequent updates after every 5 min of such an event. The system supports caregivers of patients with early and moderate Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s patients are prone to disorientation, confusion and tend to wander off. Since the device eliminates the need for the patients to operate it and is instead at the discretion of the system itself, the chances of it failing to help are minimized. Hence, with this project, the authors address the need for an autonomous device that can assist caretakers in tracking Alzheimer’s patients.

The various existing technologies that are in use now for tracking are often high in price, not tailored to Alzheimer’s and are non-autonomous. To overcome this, the authors utilized easily accessible technology into developing this system, which not only be affordable, but also addresses the major flaw in existing systems – which is that they rely on being operated by the patients themselves.

In 2006, four successful entrepreneurs decided to establish a world-class mega university. Initially, the project progressed slowly until Vineet Gupta was able to locate a small plot of land in Sonipat, Haryana. Forty-eight hours before the payment deadline, Ashish Dhawan and Sanjeev Bikchandani agreed to invest in their personal capital to kick start the project. They however suggested a pivot in favour of a smaller private liberal arts college. Meanwhile, Pramath Sinha, with prior experience in establishing the Indian School of Business launched a pilot through the Young India Fellowship (YIF). Dhawan and Bikchandani, through their extensive entrepreneurial networks, raised scholarships for the first two batches of the fellowship in the hope of attracting other donors to the board and getting a buy-in for Ashoka University. The team faced a number of challenges: managing the new model of collective philanthropy, recruiting faculty and finding jobs for the first undergraduate batch. At Ashoka University's first graduation ceremony in 2017 they wondered whether this model could revolutionise the higher education space like the IITs and IIMs had done for the country.

The objective of the study was to analyze the perception of knowledge and experience development in social entrepreneurship in students of a university certified by Ashoka as a Changemaker campus and to identify data that argue for equitable training among all students regardless of gender and discipline studied.

The authors evaluated the perception of knowledge about social entrepreneurship of a group of students from a university certified as Ashoka Changemaker Campus to check if there are differences by gender and disciplinary area. The population was 140 students, to whom a validated instrument was applied.

The results shed light on the few differences among students in the business, engineering and health sciences disciplines compared to those enrolled in the humanities and social sciences concerning knowledge and experience in social entrepreneurship. The findings also indicate gender equality in the perception of knowledge and experience of innovation and social entrepreneurship.

The sample size in the different disciplinary areas is a limitation of this research. However, the findings are valuable in terms of gender and the study being conducted in the first university certified as a Changemaker Campus in Latin America.

Underlying the statistics and the hypotheses is important in improving students' experience and expanding their equitable opportunities to learn about and implement innovative proposals for social entrepreneurship projects.

Training in equality and inclusion contributes to an equitable and socially just society, especially when this training aims to bring new possibilities to society. This study links with those that have been conducted in other institutions, where conscious efforts have been made to reduce the gender gap or differences by disciplinary area when undertaking social entrepreneurship projects that connect sectors for social benefit. This research also argues for the need to identify the impact of other cultural elements, in addition to the knowledge provided by universities, that reduce the gap among their students.

This study is original because of its hypotheses about university students' social entrepreneurship projects, being conducted in a special environment (Ashoka Changemaker campus) in Latin America. The data were analyzed under hypothesis testing, contrasting the empirical evidence with the theoretical assumptions.

Social entrepreneurship (SE) has become the engine propelling the rapid expansion of the social/environmental sector; thus, the authors need to examine it from different perspectives. First of all, it is vital to understand the concept of SE in an attempt to understand the most basic question: what makes an entrepreneurship social and what makes a social initiative a SE? Second, it is important to know the tools to develop a SE such as the business model canvas and design thinking, among others, which are adapted to SE, as well as tools that are unique to the sector such as impact measurement and impact investing. Third, aspiring SEs have to understand the current ecosystem in order to take advantage of the enormous support that the SE ecosystem has to offer thanks to global players such as Ashoka, the Schwab, and Skoll foundations as well as prominent Latin American players such as New Ventures Group, ANDE, and collective company-driven initiatives such as Momentum led by BBVA Bank that have supported more than 10,000 SE all over the world. Finally, the authors will introduce the case of low-income house builders Hábtiva and a student challenge to ignite aspiring social entrepreneurs. This chapter provides a glimpse of the field SE by focusing in its importance in our current challenging world, its definition, some tools used in the field, the current ecosystem of SE, how to measure social impact, and some cases and challenges.

Social entrepreneurs in both the developed and the developing countries have established social enterprises with the intent of solving social problems leveraging social innovations that create sustainable social impact goals. The research gap that calls for this research is the question: ‘Are social problems, social objectives, social activities, social outputs, social outcomes and social impact goals of social enterprises the same in the developed and the developing countries?’ Against the above backdrop, this chapter presents a comparative discourse of cases of social enterprises in the developed and developing countries using the Theory of Change framework to provide answers to the above research question. The chapter adopts a qualitative research method to generate rich findings from diverse cases, reports, articles, and other secondary sources from the developed and developing economies. To ensure academic rigour and objectivity, a sample of 50 scholarly works on social enterprises were reviewed, which produced in-depth insights on the subject. Additionally, 16 cases on social enterprises from the developed and developing countries were purposively selected and meticulously analysed using the content analysis (CA) and the thematic analysis (TA). The first finding revealed that the social enterprises in the developed countries focused on ‘the secondary-level social issues’ such as education, health, environmental issues, psycho-social disabilities, wealth inequality, integration enterprises, work-integration services, financial exclusion, and gender balance. This is the focus of Ashoka, Children Commissioner, Allen Carr Easyway, Angaza Design Inc., Bridge International Academies, and others. The second finding indicated that the social enterprises in the developing countries focused on ‘the primary level social issues’ such as illiteracy, poor school enrollment, unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, gender imbalance, weak healthcare system including hygiene and sanitation. This is the focus of VisionSpring, Danone Clover – Daniladies and Danimama, Unjani Clinic NPC, Indego Africa, and others. The implication of the findings is that irrespective of continental contexts, social enterprises are established to bridge critical social problems, hence their philosophy transcends geographical contexts. The chapter concludes with a summary of insightful information and suggestions, which could trigger more empirical research on the subject.

This paper aims to investigate the motivations of social entrepreneurs in East Africa to create a social enterprise and their identified links to successful social entrepreneurship in East Africa.

The authors employed a qualitative method by performing thematic analysis on a set of interviews on social entrepreneurs from East Africa who are Ashoka fellows.

The findings suggest that intense personal experiences linked to past-life events as well as a high achievement orientation towards improving livelihoods and creating impact serve as key triggers for social entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurship focusses on system change at national and local levels. Their success is also seen when the social entrepreneurs have achieved their mission and are no longer needed; thus, they become irrelevant. The paper discusses the implications of these findings on the model used for sustainable social entrepreneurship in East Africa.

Based on an exploratory research on Ashoka fellows, the study adds insight to their motivations and success which can be used in a wider scale study of the same.

The authors advance the scarce empirical research on East African social entrepreneurs, link success factors of social entrepreneurship to a recent framework on motivation to engage in social entrepreneurship and stimulate further research in the area. The study contributes to the literature on social entrepreneurship by linking success factors of social entrepreneurship to a recent framework on motivation to engage in social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurs are leaders who aspire to build more just societies through the mechanisms of the market. The concept of social enterprise has grown increasingly popular, but it continues to be a nebulous notion. This chapter explores the meaning of social enterprise and the attributes and characteristics of social entrepreneurial leaders whose enterprises have become the vehicles of social, economic, and even political transformations. The transformative potential of social entrepreneurial leaders is illustrated with brief, but prominent, examples that are aimed to inspire further research. It is shown that social entrepreneurship is not confined to an exclusive arena, but actually flourishes in diverse sectors. It is also posited that educational institutions and organizations can promote greater interest and investment in social entrepreneurship as a progressive model for a positive social change.