Tying innovation to Jesuit values and the three C’s.
Patrick Guerra ’73, MBA ’76, was the director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at SCU when he began thinking about ways to encourage businesses and entrepreneurs—while tying innovation to “Jesuit values and the three C’s,” he says. What he came up with, along with cofounders Albert Bruno and James Koch, was the Global Social Benefit Incubator program, a joint venture with the Center for Science, Technology, and Society and the Leavey School of Business.
The GSBI was launched in 2002 to provide support to innovators and industrialists who use technology and business principles to address the fundamental social issues of poverty, disease, and human suffering. On July 30 of this year, the University and CSTS announced the creation of the Patrick Guerra Social Entrepreneurs Fund to offer additional financial support to social entrepreneurs engaged in humanitarian efforts to create better lives for people in countries around the world.
“Most of these programs are funded by foundations [and are] dependent on grants,” Guerra says. “The GSBI was born to help them develop a business model, to help them make their own money, be self-sustaining.” SS
