The last few years have seen a tremendous focus on purpose, with study after study highlighting the growing importance people, and especially young people, are placing on living their life in a way that’s wholly congruent with their values. They want the companies they buy from to trade in an ethical and responsible way, and for the organizations they work for to not only make a positive difference to the world, but to offer them work that is fulfilling and enriching in equal measure.

You may argue that this is asking too much, but for many young people today it’s an aspiration they are wholeheartedly reaching for. This desire to make a positive dent on society was dripping from the walls of Ashridge House, the home not only of the Ashridge Business School, but for six weeks every summer, the finalists of the Hult Price Accelerator.

The Hult Prize was launched in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Ahmad Ashkar and taps into the Hult family vision to open the world up through education. The accelerator has a number of significant differences from other accelerators around the world, both in the things they strive to achieve but also how they go about it.

Firstly, the backing of Bertil Hult is crucial, as not only does this underpin the desire to back ventures that want to improve the world, but it also provides the accelerator with a more long-term focus than many others that rely on exits to sustain operations.

“Bertil Hult has a burning desire to make the world a better place, and he’s given us tremendous freedom about how we achieve that ambitious goal,” Ahmad Ashkar, Founder and CEO of the Hult Prize Foundation says. “That’s really helped us to take a long-term perspective and not let the need for a quick exit get in the way of helping our startups make a true and lasting difference to the world.”

Secondly, the connections of the Hult International Business School give the accelerator a truly global reach. They have a presence in around 1,500 universities around the world, with these teams supporting student entrepreneurship, before the best startups from each hub are sent forth to regional finals.

“If you want to learn about social entrepreneurship and you believe you can bring this movement into your school, just apply and we’ll come and help you with anything you need, whether it’s marketing materials, training, a guidebook and one-on-one support to enable them to do much more in their universities,” Nelly Andrade Head of Global Operations at the Hult Prize says.

Lastly, the six week residential accelerator is a fully immersive experience. Alongside masterclasses and tutorials on various aspects of running a startup, the entrepreneurs live, work and play alongside the expert mentors and fellow entrepreneurs who not only help them develop their ideas so they’re ready to pitch for the chance to win the $1 million investment, but also provide them with connections that will last a lifetime.

Finding changemakers

The nascent entrepreneurs are selected based upon a number of criteria, including how disruptive, scalable, and profitable their ideas are. The most important criteria is that the startup has to make a social impact, and each year the Hult Prize targets particular areas to focus on.

For the 2019 edition, startups focused on improving youth employment prospects, with entrepreneurs proposing businesses in areas such as soft skills development, more equitable employment in the AI-based economy and giving young people greater access to employment opportunities in the west.

The entrepreneurs are given coaching and mentoring in areas such as team development, developing minimum viable product, customer awareness and ensuring market fit, the importance of developing robust partnerships, creating sustainable and enduring businesses, and the development of a roadmap for the next twelve months. The ultimate aim is that all participants are equipped to develop sustainable businesses that make a lasting impression on the world.

This desire to find people willing to try and make the world a better place is evident in a growing number of courses and programs designed to encourage and support social change. Foremost among these is the Becoming a Changemaker course at Berkeley Haas.

Becoming a changemaker

The course aims to equip and inspire participants to create a better world, whether on an individual, organizational or societal level.

“The opportunity to affect change isn’t restricted to a single sector, organization or type of person,” Alex Budek, Berkeley Haas’ Changemaker in Residence says. “Each of us can be powerful agents of change, and we can drive positive change from wherever we are.”

The course covers areas such as developing a changemaker mindset and leading for change, with a number of guest speakers illuminating the course with their practical experiences of change. The movement is part of a growing trend towards the development of enterprises with a clear social purpose as well as a desire to make money.

Robust employers

Such socially minded enterprises are likely to play an increasingly important role in the future of work. New research from the University of Warwick highlights their impact, not only as changemakers, but as employers of repute.

The researchers set out to analyze how resilient organizations such as social enterprises and co-operatives were to economic changes, and indeed how such organizations can help to support employment levels and provide ‘good’ jobs in the face of such changes.

The research focused its attention on twenty organizations across five countries in the EU to explore the contribution they made to both job creation and retention, whilst also exploring how these organizations can be best supported in their endeavors.

The analysis found that social enterprises were surprisingly resilient to the financial crisis, with a strong track record of both creating and maintaining jobs. What’s more, workers in such organizations reported feeling that the jobs were of high quality, both in absolute and relative terms to jobs elsewhere.

A key factor in this strength was the management skills found in these organizations, with managers having access to informal support from their own social networks that helped to drive success. This support was far more available than any official support from government channels, who the authors believe could do far more to support social enterprises, especially in tendering processes that so often focus on the cheapest supplier.

“The challenge for UK and other European economies since the financial crisis is not just how to create jobs, but—in the era of zero hour contracts, the gig economy and flexible labour markets—how to achieve growth in good jobs,” the authors say.  “This study concludes that not only can cooperatives and social enterprises achieve employment growth at least on a par with other types of organisation, they create good quality jobs. They do this through inclusive management; reinvesting and sharing economic value; shared values; and prioritising jobs not just wages and profit.”

Organizations striving to make the world a better place are typically analyzed in terms of the change they’re able to bring to the world, but as they also provide resilient employment, the benefits from unleashing an army of change makers is certainly multi-faceted.