Global Social Entrepreneurship Competitions

Abstract

A growing number of organizations have launched social entrepreneurship competitions to help students develop the knowledge and skills to create sustainable solutions to the intertwined challenges of health and development. We conducted a program evaluation of the first 9 years of the Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC) at the University of Washington to assess the outcome of participation. Method: We sent an e-mail survey to all GSEC participant finalists from 2005 to 2013. Responses to closed-ended questions were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and responses to open-ended questions were analyzed for major themes. Results: Of the 111 finalist teams, 46% responded to the survey. Motivations for participating included prestige (77%), networking (62%), and mentoring (49%). Of respondents, 76.4% indicated their teams were interdisciplinary, having backgrounds in business (78%), engineering (39%), and health sciences (22%). Of the 19 teams awarded a prize, 12 subsequently launched their businesses. Most respondents (81.4%) felt GSEC helped them become better global social entrepreneurs. Conclusion: Evaluation results suggest that networking and mentoring are key benefits of participation, and that more could be done to increase health sciences students’ involvement. Further research is necessary to explore the global impact and social return on investment of these competitions.