New Haven Biz discusses the future of social entrepreneurship in New Haven with Onyeka Obiocha, director of innovation at Yale’s Dwight Hall. An entrepreneur himself, Obiocha assists students and community members in starting socially conscious business ventures.
Q: You were hired last year to lead the Social Innovation Lab at Yale. What does that look like in day to day life?
A: The Social Innovation Lab is an incubator for Yale and non-Yale members of the New Haven community dedicated to leveraging their talents to create positive social impact. Every day the goal is to help build an infrastructure within Yale and New Haven that lowers the barrier of entry for individuals interested in launching or providing support for social enterprises, social movements, etc. Day to day that looks like working with my extraordinary colleague Dr. Marquita Taylor to connect changemakers with financial and human capital, attract mentors, develop workshops, build cross-sector collaborations, and share a lot of laughs.
Q: Social entrepreneurship is a growing trend, or is it? Does it have staying power? To what do you attribute its popularity?
A: I consider social entrepreneurship an evolution of traditional entrepreneurship rather than a growing trend. According to the 2017 Cone Communications CSR study, 87 percent of consumers said they would purchase a product because a company advocated for an issue they cared about and over 75 percent would refuse to purchase a product if they found out a company supported an issue contrary to their beliefs. In 2015, the Global Network for Advanced Management interviewed students at the top business school in the world and found that 84 percent of students would choose to work for a company with good environmental practices and 44 percent of students are willing to accept a lower salary to work for a company with better environmental practices. To me, this means, businesses need to think about more than just their bottom line to attract the next generation of consumers and top talent.
This increased popularity stems from individuals reimagining the role of businesses as institutions that inform society rather than organizations that react.
Q: What examples of social entrepreneurship are you seeing in the City of New Haven? How is the Social Innovation Lab involved?
A: My favorite example of social entrepreneurship in New Haven is Sanctuary Kitchen, a program that uses food as a vehicle for economic development and social cohesion. (Full disclosure: I am on the board of CitySeed, the organization behind Sanctuary Kitchen). Launched a little over a year ago, Sanctuary Kitchen started as a group of volunteers interested in highlighting talented immigrant and refugee chefs. Since then, Sanctuary Kitchen has become a backbone organization hosting cooking classes, cooking demonstrations and supper clubs, offering catering services for local businesses and launching a 10-week food entrepreneurship incubator — all geared to support immigrants and refugees in New Haven.
Through my role leading the Social Innovation Lab, I connect Sanctuary Kitchen with various resources at Yale, but the women leading the program are so amazing I spend most of my time trying not to get in their way.
Q: Can you speak to your previous ventures and how those experiences informed your work going forward?
A: Before Yale, I was the co-founder of A Happy Life Coffee, a coffee roasting company built on the hypothesis that business can play a role in creating a happier world for all. To achieve this goal we invested 100 percent of our net profits into coffee roasting communities to help break the cycles of poverty. About a year into the business we realized, due to the high costs of bootstrapping both a startup roasting company and the accompanying international development work, that our time and money could be better leveraged to create an impact locally. Hence our next project, The Happiness Lab, a coffee shop and civic space based in downtown New Haven. The Happiness Lab deployed A Happy Life’s theory of change in a local context. We hosted community events, helped launch local projects and provided a convening space for individuals passionate about building a more inclusive New Haven. Although the model proved successful, I became concerned with the effectiveness of social entrepreneurship. As an entrepreneur, I was well aware of the change I can effect through business. However, as a young black male, I knew once I locked the doors to the coffee shop I had to deal with a complex set of social issues that do not have a market-based solution. That realization brought me to my current position at Yale, working at both the Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale and the Center for Public Service and Social Justice. I have the opportunity to build an academic and practical approach to reimagine the relationship between social justice and economic development to create equitable communities.
Wendy Pierman Mitzel can be reached at news@newhavenbiz.com
