The most important impact investing conference?.that has nothing ...

Date: February 21, 2012

By: Ben Powell

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Ben Powell, Founder and Managing Partner of Agora Partnerships

?The purpose of the university?is impact, not output?

- Micheal Crow, President, Arizona State University.

I?ve just returned from the future, and I?m pumped. Ashoka U Exchange 2012 was a fantastic conference. Unlike many conferences out there, this one had a clear point of view: today?s university needs to change ? fast ? to meet the challenges of our times.

The conference, hosted February 10-11 at Arizona State University ? a university that has integrated entrepreneurship throughout its entire curriculum ? promises to have tremendous long-term influence on the impact investing movement.

Begun in 2008, Ashoka U is a relatively new initiative of DC-based Ashoka. In the hands of Marina Kim, one of the ablest social entrepreneurs working today, and her team it can now be called a huge success, albeit one that is just getting started. Its purpose is to revolutionize the way higher education works by infusing social innovation, real-world problem solving, radical collaboration, and entrepreneurship (in the fullest sense of the word) into the DNA of college life.

Today, too many universities are stuck with old ways of thinking ? professors have PhD?s but little practical experience, learning is silo-ed, and students have few ways of actively using their skills to make a difference in the world. Even innovations like internships and experiential learning can be updated for the times? ? why, for example, do internships need to end after the summer ? why can?t they be continued during class? If practitioners are just as good if not better than tenured faculty as teaching leadership, teamwork, creativity, and empathy ? four critical skills for the 21st Century ? then why aren?t there more of them teaching? What I learned is that increasingly they are ? and the trend is deepening.

What I found so powerful about the conference ? aside from the meticulous curation of the panels and relentless focus on the need for change ? were its implications for impact investing, especially Agora?s focus on early stage entrepreneurship.

IMPACT INVESTING AND THE UNIVERSITY

In the not-so-distant future, students at the best-run schools are going to have the chance to become true partners with real world organizations in a variety of fields ? especially impact investing. We already know that MBA students are becoming an increasingly important part of international development ? providing key consulting to organizations and small businesses alike, and in the future this work will only deepen and expand to undergraduates as well. Student-run investment funds, research and assessment projects, entrepreneur support initiatives, incubators and accelerators, and the development of long-term partnerships between universities and civil society organizations, including businesses, are only a few of the many ways universities will engage in the impact investing space.

Universities are increasingly teeming hubs of impatient students who are eager to get out of the ivory tower and into the field.

Universities are increasingly teeming hubs of impatient students who are eager to get out of the ivory tower and into the field. The amount of human, social, and financial capital at universities is staggering ? how much of it is being channeled to address our most pressing problems? Does anyone seriously believe universities are doing enough, given their tremendous resources?

Visionary students and faculty today are re-imaging the structure and role of the university and creating new ways to collaborate with non-profit leaders seeking targeted, skilled support. In a world obsessed with massive scale, universities and small businesses have the potential to create human scale partnerships that provide more transformative educational experience than any classroom alone ever could, while also improving the human condition. Now, that is something to get excited about.

Source: http://agorapartnerships.org/the-most-important-impact-investing-conference-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-impact-investing

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