Social Value Creation

Social Responsibility. Sustainability. Social Entrepreneurship. These are just a few of the terms that may come to mind when thinking about social value creation. Social value creation strives to balance profits and public good. It can be produced by a company, a nonprofit, or—as the lines continue to blur—anything in between. Social value creation leverages cross-disciplinary collaboration, market-based problem solving, and sound business principles to co-create economic prosperity and social / environmental well-being.

THE CENTER

The Center is comprised of three full-time staff members who collectively account for more than 25 years of experience in the business, nonprofit, social enterprise, and sustainability sectors. We offer hands-on learning experiences through programmatic and extracurricular opportunities like the Social Innovation Fellows program, student consulting projects, the Ashoka U Terp Changemaker team, and events like our annual Social Enterprise Symposium. We also invest in the creation of new courses, help integrate new content into existing courses (at the graduate and undergraduate level), and fund research in the areas of corporate social responsibility and sustainability.

OUR HISTORY AT SMITH

In 2008 four University of Maryland students set out to answer the question, ‘how can business create positive social impact?’ Unable to satisfy their query through existing on-campus opportunities and curricula, they turned their attention outward surveying the broader academic landscape. They benchmarked and documented their findings, and turned their attention back to the University of Maryland community with the goal of finding and recruiting a champion to help bring ‘social enterprise’ to campus. In their search they discovered Melissa Carrier. Undertaking a similar assessment in her work at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, their timing was perfect.

In the year that followed Melissa and her new student team laid the foundation for what is now the Social Enterprise Symposium, and helped establish the University of Maryland as a pilot campus for the “Ashoka U Changemaker Campus” program. In that same year, the University of Maryland appointed G. “Anand” Anandalingam dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business. Dean Anand assumed leadership with the confident position that Smith should be leading when it comes to the discourse on social responsibility and innovation - not following.

All of this, along with the growing demands of students, corporate constituents, and alumni to make social and environmental impact a priority, became the impetus behind the Center for Social Value Creation. In 2009, the Center was formerly launched under the leadership of Melissa Carrier, Executive Director.