Food for Thought

I stumbled upon an blog post this past week that seems to do an excellent job summarizing this class as well as many of the things posted about on this blog.  The post titled "From 'Too Big to Solve' to Too Big to Fail"was written by the founder and global director of Hult Global Case Challenge, Ahmad Ashkar.  In his article, Ahmad brings up many different points that I immediately thought should be shared with our class.

The post centers on the notion that college and grad students (especially MBA students) are at the forefront of social entrepreneurship.  Ahmad, when initially starting the Hult Global Case Challenge that is based on the goal of identifying and launching the best student developed solutions to the world's biggest problems, argued that business students have the drive and tenacity that most NGOs and non-profits lack when addressing social issues.  Playing off the notion of too big to fail, he claims that many traditional organizations believe that most social problems are essentially too big to solve and therefore only have missions of solving problems as best as they can but not actually believing they can completely fix or eradicate them.  However, today's generation of business students are not limited by this mindset or previously established boundaries.  With their knowledge, business skills, and other resources such as grants and case competitions they will be able to come up with sustainable but also scalable solutions to some of the biggest and most pressing issues in today's world.  Ahmad hopes that our generation can present "young and fresh ideas, from students who were not jaded by what others have dubbed impossible and certainly not restrained by the 'too big to solve' mindset."

This blog post was in many was inspiring and reminded me that while yes at some points when looking at social ventures such as the ones we are developing in this class we start by targeting specific problems in particular populations or regions, it is possible that some days we can grow these ideas on a much bigger scale.  The Hult Global Case Challenge along with other initiatives and competitions are just some ways that we can shift the way social issues are looked at and solutions are developed.  The link to this post is below.  I especially urge everyone to read Ahmad's article. Enjoy!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmad-ashkar/from-too-big-to-solve-to-_b_1312941.html