This week in my social entrepreneurship class: Kareem Saleh, CEO of Fairplay AI - World's 1st Fairness-as-a-Service company helps banks ensure fairer lending while boosting profits. Insights from his talk:
🔹Fairness through Awareness, not blind neutrality
🔹Addressing blind spots in models is crucial

Last Thursday in my Social Entrepreneurship class (MS&E 176), students heard from Anna Goldstein, Director of Impact at Prime Coalition on catalytic capital & impact investing, and from Miz Bernardo from the College of Engineering on public speaking. #SocialEntrepreneurship #Stanford

Started teaching my Social Entrepreneurship course today! Over the next 10 weeks, students will design ventures that tackle real-world challenges—combining innovation with impact. Guest speakers from the field are joining us too. Can’t wait to share more soon! #Teaching #SocialEntrepreneurship

6/ Key Result 3: Our email experiment found women were significantly more likely to respond to recruitment emails emphasizing social impact vs. commercial goals. #econsky

5/ Key Result 2: In NSF I-Corps projects (2011–2019), women PIs emphasized social impact more in their abstracts compared to men. #econsky

4/ Key Result 1: From our survey, women expressed significantly stronger social entrepreneurial intentions than men. #econsky

2/ Women make up ~20% of NSF I-Corps participants. Emphasizing social impact over commercial goals can boost women’s interest in entrepreneurship, addressing gender gaps in innovation. There is a similar gap in patenting. #econsky

6/ Key Result 3: Our email experiment found women were significantly more likely to respond to recruitment emails emphasizing social impact vs. commercial goals.

5/ Key Result 2: In NSF I-Corps projects (2011–2019), women PIs emphasized social impact more in their abstracts compared to men.

4/ Key Result 1: From our survey, women expressed significantly stronger social entrepreneurial intentions than men.

2/ Why it matters: Women only make up ~20% of NSF I-Corps participants. Our research finds that emphasizing social impact over commercial goals can dramatically increase women’s interest in entrepreneurship. There is a similar gender gap in patenting.

Men, on the other hand, showed equal interest in both social and commercial messages, indicating gender differences in motives.

At one I-Corps site, we conducted a field experiment to test the effect of emphasizing social vs. commercial motives. By varying recruitment email messages for I-Corps, we found that women were more likely to respond to a message emphasizing social impact.

Next, we analyzed 1,267 NSF I-Corps Award winners project summaries (2012-2019) and found that women PIs are more likely to highlight social impact, while both genders equally emphasize commercial impact.

Using NSF I-Corps survey data we find that women in NSF I-Corps show stronger *social* entrepreneurial intentions than men.

We draw on the @NSF I-Corps program. It trains researchers to turn discoveries into marketable products, but women make up only 20% of participants. There is a similar gender gap in patenting.