Brett Smith, professor of social entrepreneurship, attends the conference in South Africa to discuss new research.
Speaking among world leaders such as the president of the Republic of Rwanda and Kenya's deputy prime minister, Brett Smith, founding director of the Center of Social Entrepreneurship at Miami University, attended the Promise of Leadership Conference in South Africa March 19-21.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation and the African Leadership Initiative put on the conference and asked for Smith to speak about his research on social entrepreneurship.
Smith's research focuses on scaling, or increasing the impact, of social entrepreneurial efforts.
"This research was the first attempt to begin to test a model of scaling social entrepreneurial impact," Smith said.
Smith said former President Bill Clinton's statement-"nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere. The frustration is that we can't seem to replicate (those solutions) anywhere else"-supports the means for research on scaling.
"We try and take that same situation to different geography or another context," Smith said. "(When the) solutions don't work as well, (we need) to identify what those factors (are) that allow organizations to do this more successfully."
Smith was one of 38 speakers from around the world at the conference. Two other speakers included Paul Kagame, president of the Republic of Rwanda and Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya's deputy prime minister and finance minister.
"Going to Africa allows you to see first hand very much the work we're trying to do, the impact we're trying to make," Smith said. "Being around world leaders that do these same kinds of things (impose a) global scale of social entrepreneurship."
Smith said it was a great experience for Miami to be represented at the conference.
"It puts us on a world wide stage linking back to social entrepreneurship, linking that back to Center for Social Entrepreneurship (at Miami)," Smith said.
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The Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Miami also partnered with U2 frontman Bono's company, Edun Apparel, to create Edun LIVE on Campus, a socially conscious company that sells T-shirts made in Africa to help the country's economic development, according to Smith.
President of Edun LIVE on Campus, junior Ali Tanker, has worked with Smith since her first-year Introduction to Entrepreneurship class.
"We're very excited that he was able to go to Africa and speak at this prestigious conference," Tanker said. "It's great to be able to make so many connections, and it's helpful to us as students to further network an understanding of this field of social entrepreneurship."
Smith said he is pleased with where the Center for Entrepreneurship has come, especially with the Edun LIVE on Campus project.
"It's one thing to start an organization that (focuses on) social value, but to take the organization and have that scale or grow to increase so that the value it generates is significant (on a) regional, national or international scale," Smith said.
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