In guiding our actions towards Humane Entrepreneurship, we can be an organization that does not only preach about Humane Entrepreneurship but one that also practices it.

Following our reflection last week discussing the “End of the Status Quo,” we think it is time that we seriously share and discuss the steps that ICSB has and will continue to take as we endlessly strive towards a more humane-centered way of acting entrepreneurially in this world. Over the past couple of months, we have reflected upon the theory and practice of Humane Entrepreneurship. Now, it is time to move beyond thinking and imagining; now is the time to model Humane Entrepreneurship.

As promoters and upholders of Humane Entrepreneurship, what an excellent opportunity we have to exemplify the practice ourselves! Given the perspective-altering moments of the past couple months, ICSB has been able to genuinely narrow in on what is important to us as an organization, including our values, the organization’s sustainable practices, and our collective community. Flowing from this reflection, ICSB has worked to center all of our programmings around the interests of our members as well as new and pressing topics that we see as crucial to the formation of our community. We are centered around the human, being empathetically oriented to the whole person and not just the sliver of our members’ lives, which pertains to ICSB. We have attempted to curate an empowering environment, working consciously to open up opportunities to women and younger entrepreneurs. Enablement has and continues to develop as we formalize programs, bolster the ICSB Gazette, and continuously try to discover new and enticing opportunities for our members. ICSB models the equitable work of Humane Entrepreneurship as we provide discounts for members from developing nations, ensuring that all voices are brought to the table, and work to promote MSMEs for the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

As we are continually attempting to show up as our best selves for this community, we recognize that we have a way to go to reach the peak of the Ideal orientation for our Humane Entrepreneurship categorization. Reaching for this Ideal status, at ICSB, we are focusing on ways that we can formalize our desire to promote a human-focused conscious while creating sustainable patterns of growth. It is from this place of discovery; we have created the ICSB Resiliency program.

This program focuses on supporting the individual. It combines ICSB’s top-level programs into one calendar and cost so that you can fully engage with the learning available to you. Finishing with an ICSB diploma and a heightened understanding of your entrepreneurial interests, this formal connection to ICSB offers and opens clear pathways of communication with ICSB leadership, which will be ever more critical as you become be a vital role in leading the ICSB community as well as the local community to the 2021 ICSB World Congress in Paris.

Being the first of its kind, the ICBS World Congress will bring Humane Entrepreneurship to “l’Exposition Universelle,” so that entrepreneurship and SMEs can take the lead in ushering the world into peace, prosperity, and happiness. This event works innovatively and creatively to bring together all voices throughout the field of entrepreneurship so that we can pull down the unnecessary walls that keep communication and support at a distance from the people that need it the most. In moving into Humane Entrepreneurship, we are building a resilient community that can succeed no matter the circumstances.

We look forward to you joining us on this journey to and with Humane Entrepreneurship. ICSB recognizes the necessity to both offer and realizes a humane-entrepreneurial orientation (H-EO), meaning that we are concurrently advocating and partaking in the widespread adoption of HumEnt. In knowing that “large-scale organizational performance effects are more likely to occur as a result of shared cultural values and beliefs that are accepted by organization members,” we must work individually for the greater collective. In guiding our actions towards HumEnt, we can be an organization that does not only preach about Humane Entrepreneurship but one that also practices it.

References:

Kim, K., A. El Tarabishy, Z. Bae (2018). “Humane Entrepreneurship: How Focusing on People Can Drive a New Era of Wealth and Quality Job Creation in a Sustainable World,” Journal of Small Business Management 56(S1), 10–29.

Article by:

Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy
President & CEO, ICSB
Deputy Chair, Department of Management, GW School of Business

In creating sustainable and continuous cycles of growth, our enterprises must see themselves as part of a greater whole.

As transparency increases and the global population stands firmly and united in their demands to promote a just and green economy.

In December of 2019, ICSB provided a message to its entrepreneurship community, indicating the foreseeable “End of the Status Quo.” ICSB was expecting the need for a great upheaval of our past societal structure to meet the needs of an advancing world. With the growing demand for employment opportunities, attention to global health trends, and humanitarian justice, we can no longer ignore how our status quo has failed us. At the turn of the decade, we understood a need for change, and, now, almost 9 months into this Decade of Action (United Nations), it seems complicated to imagine how we managed to exist within that ancient platform.

Welcoming in this new paradigm, brought on by the need for change and subsequent crises that forced that change, we might find it challenging to articulate precisely where we are. Luckily, as always, with entrepreneurship, we can choose with which perspective we wish to engage in. Without ignoring the struggles and challenges presented by the current status of our global community, ICSB would like to participate with the new and exciting changes, unearthed by the recent crises, which can no longer be ignored. From significant alterations in education systems and the digitization of the entire world to discussions around a universal basic income, we can choose to capture the opportunities from these events. In thinking about the dramatic changes in the political world, the rise of the gig economy, and constant changes in national and international relations, ICSB has spent time reflecting on the major themes emerging from this moment.

Over the past couple of months, we have pressed ourselves to create a weekly reflection on Humane Entrepreneurship. During the struggle of the COVID-19 induced lock-down and border closures, we were uncertain of any resemblance of the present and the future. However, we felt that it was essential to build a presence that embodied our aspired future. Therefore, we have spent months creating content about the theory of Humane Entrepreneurship as we were sure that, regardless of our future, we wanted it to involve the guiding principles of care and protection for the human person as well as for our shared environment. This theory bridges the current entrepreneurial ecosystem and the ideal and future one by providing guidelines through which we might categorize enterprises. These reflection pieces have been incredible in helping shape our understanding of who we are, as an ICSB community, and where more effort and impact is needed.

The status quo is no longer enough, and in building our world anew, we might consider that we do not wish to create a new status quo, but rather that we can, instead, define our current situation through the trends it exhibits. ICSB considers four guiding themes that will push us forward into the future. The themes, being forgiveness, frugal innovation, Humane Entrepreneurship, and resiliency, represent the important topics with which we, as a community, must engage to step freely and gracefully into our future world.

In creating sustainable and continuous cycles of growth, our enterprises must see themselves as part of a greater whole. Enterprises who start to view their ventures through the perspective of frugal innovation will consequently create solutions for more people without utilizing additional resources. The businesses who are willing to honestly admit their missteps regarding employment policies, working conditions, and environmental exploitation will be able to incorporate an application of forgiveness and subsequently transition towards more virtuous practices. This execution will be part and practice of focusing on the human-specific theory of Human Entrepreneurship (HumEnt). HumEnt will ultimately leverage a firm’s, an organization’s, or a nation’s ability to create quality employment opportunities and therefore sustainably increase their wealth, which will generate patterns of resilience in the face of crisis.

As transparency increases and the global population stands firmly and united in their demands to promote a just and green economy, ICSB sees the smaller entrepreneurial units as key players in these transitions. When we begin to see the positive effects of putting an end to our past status quo, we will no longer stand for the same injustices. Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have an incredible capacity to incorporate these strategies and themes into their structural DNA to promote an equitable future for all more greatly.

Please follow with us as we expand our reflection series to include all players in the “End of the Status Quo.”

Article by:

Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy
President & CEO, ICSB
Deputy Chair, Department of Management, GW School of Business

We must think about if our output is wealth for wealth’s sake, where does that leave our world, our human community, our humanitarian systems, and the ecosystem?

Altering Perspectives with Humane Entrepreneurship

In the introduction to our paper, “Humane Entrepreneurship: How Focusing on People Can Drive a New Era of Wealth and Quality Job Creation in a Sustainable World,” Dr. Ki-Chan Kim, Dr. Song-Tae Bae and I posed the question, “Where — exactly — is the wealth of nations?” We lead from this specific question because it demands that we alter our perspective before even engaging with a theory of Humane Entrepreneurship (HumEnt). This purposeful act of expansion and openness allows readers to set aside their preconceived ideas and judgments that may prevent them from fully connecting with and receiving the ideas of HumEnt.

Returning to the idea of wealth, we must discuss how this expansion and change take place and what these might resemble. Going back to the basics, we will return to the World Bank definition published over 10 years ago describing wealth as “a complementary indicator to gross domestic product (GDP) for monitoring sustainable development in a country.” This definition demonstrated to the masses that wealth is not solely about specific amounts, a surplus of financial or physical resources, nor richness. Wealth now has grown to include the management of “a broad portfolio of assets,” including those that are “produced, human, and natural resources.”

As we know today, it is not just about the outcome of doing business, achieving performance outcomes, or leading a nation. Still, rather global trends tell us that it is more about how we carry out these activities. The recent and ever-evolving health and humanitarian crises have very much illuminated that if we do not make this necessary shift to achieving a virtuous and continuous ‘how,’ our world will not be able to continue caring for and housing the same amount of inhabitants that it does currently. Therefore, in other words, we must think about if our output is wealth for wealth’s sake, where does that leave our world, our human community, our humanitarian systems, and the ecosystem?

That is why we first must push for wealth to include the effort and resulting outcomes of the pursuit of sustainable development, as the World Bank indicated, as well as to initiate a conversation about protecting what we already have.

We have fallen so quickly and so easily to the charm of agile development that we have forgotten the value of the resources that we have. Luckily, Humane Entrepreneurship calls for heightened importance in the person and the community, so that with HumEnt we can begin to practice frugal innovation, which demands us to look at what we have, admit that it is enough, and use that to strive to provide equitable products and services for those who our system has systematically excluded.

Neither the evolution of our definition of wealth nor the complete acceptance and transition towards HumEnt will come first. These are two noble goals that we can think of as working collectively. Their combination will help us reframe and repurpose our business pursuits so that they have higher outcomes that involve sustainable and equitable change for all.

Let’s get started.

Article by:

Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy
President & CEO, ICSB
Deputy Chair, Department of Management, GW School of Business