Social experimentation via emerging practice of social entrepreneurship offers a superb way to

start-with in this direction. As a source of great social innovation, social entrepreneurship has
emerged as a field which blends the right quantity of knowledge with action and carves out some
pragmatic solutions to long standing social problems in short span of time with long term
sustainability.
One of the pertinent goals of the S-ENT sector is the creation of social ventures as well as the new
social enterprise culture specifically oriented at inclusion of marginalized groups through active
participation in it.
However, starting a social entrepreneurship venture may not attract the same amount of
attention, eyeballs or fanfare as do for-profits. Even the hunt for a government job leaves many
competent graduates jammed around or they lose the sight of the world beyond that.
In a society where the opportunity cost of education and time value of money is too high for the
youngsters, opting for a daunting social entrepreneurship career may be very calculative.
Even though the venturing in this direction may come with a lot of tailbacks, but the system is so
adaptable that every problem comes with its solution in a crowd funding scenario. Be it funding,
or for that matter any managerial or technical issue. Surprisingly, it is the lack of motivation from
different sections of the society which has marred the spirit of such innovative social venturing in
Kashmir.
Complementarily, the results of recent doctoral research survey of social enterprises across India
by the author confirmed ‘leadership’ among others as the most significant factor determining the
success of such socially innovative ventures.
Unlike European countries where social entrepreneurs are celebrated as heroes, Indian culture
has hampered entrepreneurship historically. It is categorically surprising that even in a time of
fast moving competition, where only thing constant is change; we are still stuck in traditional
ways of thinking and action.
We still value a government employment as superior than others. It is not because youth here
have no option other than government job, rather it is because they don’t have the required
motivation to do other things!
However, realizing the fallacies and the associated social stigma with entrepreneurship endeavors
in general, the GoI through recent policy intervention has given new impetus to the budding
sector.
Subsequently, there have been examples of exceptional icebreakers where many such innovative
social entrepreneurs have made a difference, although their number is abysmally low. Over the
time, they have evolved as leaders who broke the status quo. With powerful, new system
changing ideas, they have combined the visionary and real-world problem solving creativity
through social business venturing.
I could beckon the role of higher educational institutions in this regard is manifold. Higher
Education Institutions (HEIs) have always been playing a crucial role in delivering the
intellectual needs of the society or in long run contributing to the local economic development.
While it is commonly acknowledged that HEIs constitute an integral part of crafting innovations,
what is not so common is how that innovation can be made commercialized!
The traditional approaches of education, learning and student assessments leave little room for
students to test the learned ideas or to shake the ground with applied inquisition. The prevailing
trend of subjecting the master grade students (even for that matter including the professional
ones) to examination oriented education makes them feel comfortable in going with the
examination papers which have a standard answer and so on.
Eventually, the graduates customarily remain skeptical about their ideas or are wary about
practicing their solutions to the problems in the actual market place. For the most cases, the
institutional culture keeps them unaware of how to do it or may remain devoid of required
motivation and leadership to do the same. The results are obvious- the varsities are successfully
producing an efficient pool of cultivated unemployed youth, a pool of job-seekers rather than job
providers.
Thus, the recent buzz of growing need for HEIs, seems a fad in light of the fact if they will
continue to go with their missions of traditional text book based ready-made knowledge.
The central questions here to consider would be how knowledge can be converted into action? Or
how can the gap between research and practice can be bridged? Probably the answer to these
questions would uncover a lot of dormant factors and may elicit a diverse response.
Although, there are many institutional and academic initiatives already in place in this direction,
but their efficiency is still in question or in most cases with abysmal outcome.
The role of HEI’s lies in grooming the young creative minds to link their thoughts with practice or
for that matter linking their passion of practical problem solving with their assessment. More
specifically, the HEI’s can prove to be basin for giving graduates the requisite space to challenge,
or giving more mobility to their enthusiasm to gradually slice innovation.
The faculty for the most part must arise as mentors rather than the traditional teachers busy in
imparting bookish knowledge. The skills of identifying the business opportunities from social
issues (social value creation) have to be rightly instilled into graduates through a systematic
process.
The academic and other concerned institutional set-ups for example financial institutions, EDI’s
can achieve the above feat by investing in their faculty in order to enhance their dynamism,
opening ways for more academic entrepreneurship, placing more emphasis on output-based
research as well as making the learners to intern with organisations which are attempting to solve
a pressing social challenge.
Besides other measures, a vibrant interaction with different sections of society backed by
industry exposure can go in long way to help the learners to better comprehend the social issues
confronting the society.
People are demonstrably better off in the communities today by virtue of simple insight that
social problems can be solved in entrepreneurial ways. Social entrepreneurship is remarkable
proving to be a power to drag the society to new heights of socio-economic development across
the globe.
On account of presence of plethora number of social issues (unemployment, poverty, corruption,
inequalities, poor development policies, etc.) prevalent in our markets, the role of social
entrepreneurship becomes all the more important.
Social experimentation via social entrepreneurship offers an exceptional opportunity to explore,
analyze, challenge and rethink the central concepts and assumptions related to the social and
economic development. In alternate ways, it enables us to think through the situation rather than
think about the situation.
However, the above feat is achievable only in the backdrop of an inclusive participation by the
government as well as the social economic sector itself. The government and other allies shall
identify an institutional framework for effectively allocating shared responsibilities among
different stakeholders (ministries/departments, state governments, industry/employers and
funders, incubators, training and educational institutions) in an attempt to reach to a holistic S-
ENT ecosystem within the state.