Development Lab: The Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD)
Overview
Duke University will lead a Development Lab, the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke, that will improve global healthcare in two main ways. First, the Lab will identify and scale promising new technologies in healthcare delivery and prevention. Second, it will evaluate and share knowledge regarding scaling strategies and the results of the program to enable better scaling of innovations in other development sectors, informing USAID programming. Our approach to supporting social entrepreneurship for improved global health outcomes is to:
- Spark , select, and scale new solutions and technologies to address global health challenges, including many from low and middle income countries
- Engage in building an ecosystem of networking support and access to investment capital to help entrepreneurs scale their enterprises
- Assess the effectiveness of SEAD, the development problems it engages, and the solutions it support
- Disseminate practical and academic knowledge and evidence about scaling health care innovations globally, especially among actors on the ground in developing economies
Background
The Development Lab will combine the unique strengths of Duke University through programs such as The International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD) and the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE). These programs have world-class expertise on scaling social impact and knowledge on global health with resources from the SJF Institute/ Investors’ Circle, the world’s largest early-stage impact investing network to foster and scale-up high-impact innovations in global health.
Planned Activities
| Duke Start Up Challenge | Venture fairs to link global health entrepreneurs with capital from early stage investors |
|---|---|
| Mentoring and Peer to Peer | Mentoring program matching corporate and NGO leaders and Duke University faculty with health entrepreneurs. Innovators will be able to engage in peer-to-peer learning through an online portal |
| Annual Summit | An annual summit will bring together global health innovators, corporate leaders, investors, students and faculty and development professionals |
| Database | A newly established database will include high quality research and publications on how to scale social enterprise |
Goal
Scale up of scientific, technical, and business innovations in healthcare delivery and preventive services, including a subset of those from Saving Lives at Birth and other innovation programs in Global Health, and enable the application of this approach across different sectors throughout USAID. Ultimately, the Lab will achieve greater and more cost-effective impact of these innovations, increasing access to quality, affordable healthcare delivery and preventive services and thereby improving global health and wellbeing.
Last updated: February 22, 2013
Comment
Make a general inquiry or suggest an improvement.