Exploring Social Venture Creation to Enhance Career ROI With Real Career ROI Stories

This article adds to the literature on entrepreneurship, business education and career outcomes by formulating a Career Return on Investment (ROI) approach for identifying the benefits of student entrepreneur training and skillset building in terms of broad career outcomes. Beyond the direct effect of strengthening future entrepreneurs' abilities to launch and grow their own businesses businesses, entrepreneurship programs, particularly those with impactful experiential content, provide valuable training for the broader career spectrum across industries in all types of organizations. The paper builds on prior research that establishes how competencies developed in entrepreneurship programs can positively influence employability and career outcomes in a dynamic labor market. The methodology for this study infuses alumni narratives from 4 different universities that utilize the GCSEN Social Impact curriculum within both undergraduate and master’s level academic programs. Individual student stories and short and longer term career outcomes are explored to provide new evidence of the broad impacts of entrepreneurial training and competency development.