More and more companies are realizing the importance of taking an active part in building a better world through social responsibility.
Entrepreneurship is a popular concept and is usually associated with the field of business and its enterprising and wealth-generating nature, especially from a business point of view. However, it can work in parallel as a social tool, assuming a positive intervention in the life of societies. Combining entrepreneurship with social innovation has been the subject of another “Conversas por boa cosas”, an initiative of Santa Casa da Misericordia de Lisbon (SCML) in partnership with TSF and Jornal de Notícias.
According to Inês Sequeira, Director of Casa do Impacto at SCML, “Entrepreneurship can be a tool for achieving a more sustainable and inclusive society.” This means, according to the director of Santa Casa, that businessmen should not neglect an aspect linked to the common good in their practices. Especially because, she adds, “the pressure that is on generations like millennials and Gen Z is already being felt and making companies realize that if they don’t look at social and environmental issues, they have nowhere to live.” Gil Azevedo, CEO of Startup in Lisbon, believes that the scope of entrepreneurship must “respond to the problems of society”, noting at the same time that “these problems have evolved and today are different from those that existed 30 years ago”. Moreover, the official said that “projects in the field of startups are increasingly being noticed and impacted in the field of sustainability and which end up contributing to a better world”.
For the future, Gil Azevedo and Inês Sequeira reiterate the idea that the challenge is, in a prescriptive way, to find the balance between profits and societal action.
“When a business has an economic purpose, there is a need for outcomes that allow for growth that translates into social terms,” said the CEO. The head of SCML commented, “The model of capitalism must be changed to be more ethical, and the social and environmental parts must be present.”
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