Last Wednesday, President Drew Gilpin Faust sent an email to the Harvard community announcing a university-wide contest on social entrepreneurship.
“The world’s most pressing problems heed no borders, and to better address them we need to work across boundaries to formulate solutions. I can think of no place better prepared to take on such challenges than Harvard,” Faust said in a statement.
The contest is sponsored by Faust and supported by the Harvard Innovation Lab. Ten finalist teams will be given $5,000 each to develop their solution to five global issues that the University will determine.
A winner will be announced just before Commencement at the end of May. That team will be given research space in the Harvard Innovation Lab through August 2012 and a $100,000 prize which will be split with two runner-up teams.
Students affiliated with any Harvard graduate or undergraduate program are eligible to apply.
The five social problems could include global warming and poverty, and will be announced by a group of Harvard faculty later this month.
This competition will add to a number of social entrepreneurship schemes already present at the school. Two years ago the Harvard Law School launched a program called Public Service Venture Fund which gives graduating law students funding to launch social enterprise projects and pursue public interest careers. The Harvard Business School has been an annual host of the Social Enterprise Conference for over a decade.