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UCT Graduate School of Business

GSB launches new social innovation speakers series

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:54

In line with its mission to drive social innovation and new business thinking, the UCT Graduate School of Business will be launching its Social Innovation Speakers Series on February 2 with a talk by controversial author and business commentator Henry Mintzburg.

Mintzberg, Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies in the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal, will be presenting his much anticipated Rebalancing Society: Radical renewal beyond Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

He is respected as the man who single-handedly challenged the entire business school fraternity by questioning if what is being taught to MBAs has any practical use at all in the real world. His works are credited with sparking a sea-change in business education across the world.

The Social Innovation Speakers Series seeks to present, on a quarterly basis, some of the world’s top thinkers and challengers of the status quo. The aim is to stimulate new thought on how to use business and the power of business for social good.

Senior lecturer in Social Innovation at UCT GSB, Warren Nilsson, says the aim of the series is to expand the thinking around social innovation and its place in society and in business schools.

“We’d like the series to explore the issues and opportunities of social innovation in provocative ways, to expand our thinking around it, exploring the different contexts in which it exists – where’s it being done, who’s doing it,” he says. “We want to expand the boundaries of what social innovation is, both for the general public and for students at the school, so that what we teach them is aligned with the way we’re thinking about these things.”

The public is invited to attend the first presentation of this series at the GSB, Lecture Theatre 2 at 5.30pm on February 2. For more information, and to register as there are limited seats, please email event@gsb.uct.ac.za