Launch of the first executive education program on Inclusive Business and Value Creation

Today, whether it is to reach new markets or to find more sustainable and effective ways to source key materials, an increasing number of corporates realize that adopting inclusive business practices can reinforce their competitiveness, innovation and collaborators’ engagement while generating a significant societal impact.

Yet this awareness is often limited and spear-headed by small teams within companies who sometimes struggle to mobilize the company to transform business as usual and to train people to become operational quickly on these issues. Ashoka and Hystra have conducted interviews and focus groups with a dozen of MCNs to identify the barriers to the implementation of Inclusive Business initiatives. These interviews confirm the need to build capacity in Inclusive Business in order to better understand the environment, the key players and the key strategies for this profit-with-purpose ventures. While some courses are offered on Inclusive Business, they tend to be for MBAs and executive trainings are either class-room trainings or focus on the ‘sustainability’ topic at large. People interviewed express the need for applied courses that could include more peer learning/networking while offering some tangible methodology to transform experiences into insights and concrete actions.

To address this growing appetite for a different type of experience and learning on Inclusive Business related topics, Ashoka, HEC Business School and Hystra have launched the first Executive Education program on Inclusive Business and Value Creation. The program, far away from the class room, is based on experiential learning, peer learning, encounters with key players of the ecosystem, as well as on the creation of a network of engaged practitioners facing the same type of challenges in their organizations when it comes to reinventing business models. This program includes two versions respectively focused on emerging and Western countries: a one-week seminar in Kenya during the first quarter of 2014 or a week in France in the second quarter of 2014 for a group of 20 participants (15 business executives and 5 social entrepreneurs). Such a partnership between a leading academic institution, the largest global network of social entrepreneurs and a pioneer of inclusive business strategies will provide a strong platform for companies eager to be at the forefront of this new way of doing business.

Please check the program here and contact Juliette Carcano at Ashoka (jcarcano@ashoka.org) for information.