Dear all,

At the beginning of April this year I attended the 'Co-Creating Social Entrepreneurship for Growth' Conference in Copenhagen Business School (CBS). Social entrepreneurs' co-creating or co-producing their idea(s) with the consent and backing of community stakeholders at large is a particular interest of mine from a research and practical perspective. In September I am fortunate to be beginning a PhD at Oxford Brookes School of Hospitality Management studying the topic of social entrepreneurship and co-creation in greater depth.

A recent turn in social entrepreneurship studies suggests that greater emphasis in research is being placed on studying the community sphere and not ONLY the individual competencies of the social entrepreneur(s) and motivational reasons for starting an enterprise. 

In this context, CBS organising this conference was of crucial importance to me personally and also, I hope, to the delegates who attended. In a sense the very fact of holding the conference, discussing a wide range of case studies from India, Brazil, Denmark and other countries was co-creation in action. As the conference organiser Prof. Sudhanshu Rai said in the conference summation, the aim was "at understanding and discussing the challenges to social entrepreneurship, and the conversations in and out of the conference rooms bear testimony to this topic in its depth of intent and breadth."

One term used in the conference was encouraging us as practitioners and researchers to look at social entrepreneurship through the lens of an eco-system. Eco-systems in nature and in communities can only work with co-creation and co-production. Without it these eco-systems risk collapse. As a starting point for my forthcoming research this is one that I think is very apt. It is great food for thought for all those interested in this area whether as an observer, a practitioner, a researcher (or all of them combined).

The case studies that the wider project at CBS and other partner universities has worked on for the past three years are uploaded on this website www.cocreatech.dk. They are very interesting case studies and well worth the time to read them.

I encourage you to visit the above website where you can find all the videos of the conference and previous videos of the first conference in 2011. 

Comments and thoughts would be appreciated on this topic through the network or in a private message.


Jonathan Evans