Santa Clara University

About Us

Diamond Harbor, India (Credit: Anudip '05)

Purpose

Maintain and grow a capacity-building ecosystem that integrates social innovation into a sustainable economic framework that helps social entrepreneurs achieve organizational sustainability and systemic change.

Mission & Vision

The GSBI™ provides capacity building knowledge, skills, and access to innovation resources to social entrepreneurs.  This enables them to grow their social enterprises, fostering a more just and sustainable world.  The GSBI™ fulfills the growing and unmet need for capacity building in the social entrepreneur ecosystem.  

We envision a growing global network of social entrepreneurs leading enterprises with widespread social impact.  We believe that this will catalyze systemic change in key sectors and regions around the world.

Background

The GSBI™ concept was developed after co-founder Jim Koch and Raj Reddy of Carnegie Mellon were asked to consider the possibility of incubating promising ventures of young entrepreneurs from impoverished conflict zones around the world.  Jim, then the director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society was joined by Pat Guerra, then Director of the Leavey School of Business' Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and professor of marketing Al Bruno.  Within a year, Program Manager Sherrill Dale and Eric Carlson joined to form the nucleus of the current GSBI™ leadership team.  Reddy and his colleagues volunteered pedagogical models for e-learning which focus on developing knowledge and skills in a virtual environment. 

The GSBI™ is a network organization focused on tapping into the innovative zeitgeist of Silicon Valley for the benefit of social entrepreneurs around the world.

History

In 2003, the GSBI™ was launched as a pilot program of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society with seven winners from the Global Junior Challenge.  Pat Guerra provided extraordinary inspiration and vision in the conceptualization and execution of the GSBI™ pilot. With organizations from India, Philippines, and Africa the GSBI™ in April 2003. This pilot proved that the discipline of business planning offered tremendous potential benefits to the leaders of social ventures.  Moreover, it was evident from that the Silicon Valley zeitgeist and Santa Clara's mission campus in the heart of the Silicon Valley provided an ideal physical location to house the program. 

The majority of accepted participants have come from the Tech Museum Awards, World Bank Development Marketplace, Skoll Foundation’s Social Edge, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, Ashoka, and Social-Impact International.