Get Out of the Building
The Only Way to Teach Real Social Entrepreneurship
Most people driving past a business school wouldn’t have a clue what goes on inside. That’s not a compliment.
To the average neighbor, it’s a mystery building full of privileged students playing at being important. And in too many cases—they’re right.
Because modern business schools stopped thinking of themselves as part of a place. They started acting like global brands instead of civic institutions. Rankings mattered more than relevance. Local ties got replaced by LinkedIn metrics. They traded proximity for performance indicators. Now they talk about solving global poverty while ignoring the food bank two blocks away.
And so business schools have become fluent in ESG, DEI, and SDG alphabet soup, while staying completely disconnected from their own neighborhoods. The result? Students spend years simulating impact halfway across the world. Not on the grounds they cross to come to class. And the majority will graduate without ever making any. Not because they don’t care—but because they’re never invited to try.
When I teach social entrepreneurship, I don’t just teach it. I relive it. I bring in Laneo, my own scrappy venture that cleaned up neglected patches of the planet. I show students what it looked like to do the work—international, unglamorous, real. Then we turn that lens local.
I walk out the school door. I talk with the mayor’s office. I find neighborhood NGOs, citizen groups, the people drowning in work but overlooked by the institution next door. I introduce my students. They co-create. They hand off a tool, a process—something usable. Something that stays.
It’s messy. It’s fast. It’s imperfect. But it’s real.
Every school could do this. But only if faculty stop hiding behind case studies and course outlines—and walk into the real world. Because no matter how good your syllabus is, it will never replace crossing the damn street.