On May 31, a meeting on supporting social business in St. Petersburg was held at Center for Entrepreneurship (Committee for the Development of Entrepreneurship and the Consumer Market of St. Petersburg). Senior Lecturer from Department of Strategic and International Management Yulia N. Aray took part in it.

 

 

The topic of the meeting was cooperation at the level of the expert community on supporting social entrepreneurship in St. Petersburg. It was planned that the meeting participants will develop a plan how to support entrepreneurs who are engaged in social projects.

 

However, commenting on the results of the meeting, the Head of the Center for Social Entrepreneurship Marina Zhuravleva said that the federal law on social entrepreneurship had not yet been adopted in Russia, and so far there was no such subject of law and there was no single definition of the concept of “social entrepreneurship”. Therefore, the main task of the meeting was to form a conceptual system in this area.

 

GSOM SPbU Professor Yulia N. Aray said that social entrepreneurs need support because, in general, they work in low-margin areas. According to Professor, many countries have already developed various supporting initiatives for the development of social entrepreneurship. “For St. Petersburg, the event initiated by the Center for Entrepreneurship has become extremely important in connection with the need to develop mechanisms for supporting social entrepreneurship in our city,” said Professor. 

  

Julia N. Aray teaches at GSOM SPbU courses Building Sustainable Value Chains and Basics of Management for bachelors, conducts research seminars for magistracy students and courses Social Entrepreneurship (for CEMS) and Strategic Analysis. He has a degree in economic sciences and is the author of more than a dozen scientific papers. The main areas of scientific interests of Yulia N. Aray are social entrepreneurship, innovative business models, strategic analysis and qualitative research methods.