Laura Tyson is remembered fondly at the Haas School of Business, where she was dean until 2001.

When students there were pushing to establish what is now the Center for Responsible Business, she was an ally.

She continues to be an ally to ethically motivated students in her current role as the dean of London Business School, supporting initiatives by the Net Impact chapter such as our upcoming sustainable careers fair and conference.

At Laura's advice I went from London Business School to Haas for a student exchange at the end of 2005.

Socially progressive business teaching is one of the hallmarks of Haas.

The school recently came out in the Top 10 of U.S. business schools, in the company of Stanford and Cornell, for teaching social and environmental stewardship.

Kellie McElhaney, the lead faculty member was voted, alongside London Business School's Craig Smith, one of the business school faculty pioneers of the year.

Socially Minded and Competitive

Haas shows that business studies with a human face are possible, and it can be done whilst also going up in the business school rankings.

Haas has now moved up eight places to number seven in the Wall Street Journal's U.S. MBA-recruiters' rankings, which came out while I was there recently.

Haas is also the home to one of the U.S.'s leading Net Impact chapters (where graduate students engage with social issues) and the founder of the Global Social Venture Competition.

The offerings which first attracted me to Haas were the social entrepreneurship and social venture development classes. These are real-world, trail-blazing and amazingly popular with students -- all the more impressive when you consider that the social entrepreneurship class -- in effect six master classes -- was also run by students.

A series of social entrepreneurs talked about their businesses -- from Scharffen Berger's gourmet chocolate produced under progressive working conditions -- to fairly traded craftwork aggregated and marketed under the World of Good brand.

Will Rosenzweig is a genuine social entrepreneur and director of a social venture capital fund Great Spirit Ventures. Will's Social Venture Development course picked up the students who emerged from the last master class, thinking about how they too could improve the world while making money.

Pitching Research Results

This ended six weeks later when a panel of five seasoned social venture professionals took their places at the back of the classroom and gave all of the groups eight minutes each to publicly give birth to their business plan.

Over the two hour class we had enough heart warming and socially committed ventures brought bawling into the harsh light of day to turn the "business of business is business" bores into a pack of cooing aunties.

Being made of stern stuff, our panellists pointed out all the weaknesses and inconsistencies which the teams had either not noticed, or tried to paper over. There was very little cooing.

Each group had to explain:

• Business model
  
• Market
  
• Team
  
• Vision
  
• Values
  
• Clearly Defined New Idea
  
• Unmet Need
  
• Competitive Advantage (i.e., why are we going to win?)
  
• Social Impact Assessment
  
• Financial Model -- ROI
  
• Capital Required
  
• Use of Proceeds

The only instructions were to tell the story in the following way:

• Compelling
  
• Committed
  
• Memorable
  
• Credible
  
• Vivid
  
• Passionate
  
• Receptive
  
• Confident
  
• "Coachable"

So, in no particular order, here’s what the students pitched to the judges as sustainable business ideas:

Revolution Foods is a business to supply fresh, tasty, high-quality food to charter schools in the Bay Area.

The compelling social objective is to prevent a surge in diet-related ill-health bringing down the average lifespan of Americans; something which epidemiologists are starting to say is imminent.

Net Impact co-presidents Seth Bindernagel and Kirsten Tobey joined Kristin Richmond and Jonathan Klein to make this a hard-hitting team, with a convincing, local, down-to-earth angle.

Ben Cain, with Madelaine Moss, spoke on behalf of Sun Fire, a venture founded by a nonprofit activist and would-be entrepreneur planning to bring a low-tech solar-cooking technology to Somalia.

Barriers Do Count

The social entrepreneur judges liked the idea, but noted that the barriers to entry were so low they'd never keep their market position, and focusing on one East African country wasn't going to generate enough customers.

And so to my team's presentation. Animal Pharm is a complex concept and one which may yet become commercial reality, so I won't go into details, except to say it's an endangered-species-black-market-trade-substitution venture.

I presented our admirable cash flow and breakeven projections and surprisingly nobody really questioned them.

There was a rehearsed and executed delivery of the marketing plan from Nelson Fung, the marketing director. Anke Dadder, the partnerships director, finished the eight minutes with an appeal to "help us make a good return, and maybe we'll see the rhino make a good return."

Will Rosenzweig, director of a social venture capital fund Great Spirit Ventures looked genuinely surprised and pleased "That's come a long way!" he said.

The judges made useful comments about the social impact and the realistic financing levels we could expect, given the market size estimates.

Fair-Trade Clothing

And on to Avni Jamdar, Geeta Rao and Matt Schutte, to pitch an Indian fair-trade clothing concept Taanka. The samples they brought were a nice touch.

Michael Berolzheimer explaining Flash, his solar panel roof tiles business.

The judges thought this too ambitious. Looking at what an uphill struggle it’s been for Solar Century in the U.K., I'd have to agree.

Mariann Godwin explained Pura Vida, a "Whole foods Market" for Mexico, focusing on our cherished LOHAS (lifestyles of health and sustainability) segment -- allegedly representing 30% of the U.S. population and worth $226.8 billion in 2002, willing to pay extra for that green/health brand value.

She recognized the segment would be smaller in Mexico. To make her presentation particularly memorable, she brought homemade salsa and guacamole to eat with organic tortilla chips. They were probably the closest I got to a meal all day.

Finally the purely non-profit, but nonetheless inspiring Afghanistan-based textile venture called afghans4Afghans caught my attention. I hope its creator Ann Rubin achieves great success.

Some of these business ideas will go on to enter the Global Social Venture Competition.

A smaller proportion still, like Tarsian and Blinkley, World of Good and Fuelture will become fully fledged businesses.

Adam Smith stated in The Wealth of Nations:

"I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affection, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it."

Haas and its social entrepreneurs are doing their very best to prove the miserable old chap wrong.

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Conrad Young is a final-year, full-time MBA student at London Business School and president of the school’s Net Impact chapter. You can read more about Conrad’s experiences at Haas School of Business at his Regenesis blog.

This column has been reprinted courtesy of Ethical Corporation. It was first published on Feb. 7, 2006.