Identified a gap … Sebastian Robertson is funding a not-for-profit organisation. Photo: James Brickwood.

BUSINESS schools took a long hard look at themselves after the global financial crisis. Were they responsible for churning out ready-made ”millionaires by 30” who caused the mess?

If one of the new subjects they are offering is anything to go by, then the answer is yes.

Social entrepreneurship – the term used for conventional business models that deliver social or environmental returns – has been added to business schools across the US, Britain and, now, Australia.

Cheryl Kernot, a former politician turned associate professor at the centre for social change at the University of NSW, is at the forefront of social entrepreneurship in Australia.

”Young people have been looking at how to harness a business with a social purpose, not just to generate their own wealth,” she said.

”[This is] a call to action to address the systemic failures of our traditional institutions.”

There will always be a place for charity, she says, but social entrepreneurs use business principles to make profit and reinvest it in a social purpose.

The School of Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) was established in Britain in 1997. Benny Callaghan, the Australian chief executive of its schools in Sydney and Melbourne, said he was witnessing a shift among the young generation towards giving back to the community.

”The younger generation are … deciding their life and career is about more than making money,” Mr Callaghan said. ”[They] want the work they are doing to have an impact on other peoples’ lives.”

SSE student Sebastian Robertson, 25, left a lucrative finance job to start his own not-for-profit business. He created Batyr to educate students about the ”white elephants” of the school playground, such as mental health, sexual issues, anxiety and depression.

”We charge schools for the delivery of the talks,” he said. ”But for the benefit we think the students will get, even if it only connects with one student … then we believe it’s money well spent.”

Timothy Devinney, of the University of Technology, Sydney, is less convinced by the emergence of social entrepreneurs.

”I would say the world is more open to social entrepreneurship but this in itself is nothing new. Our society is no more or less moral than it was 50 years ago.”

DEVELOPERS are complaining that new housing projects are at risk of delay because of the mammoth task of connecting large estates to the national broadband network.

The government has made the NBN Co responsible for connecting all new buildings with more than 100 units and the company aims to appoint contractors by next month.

However, the president of the Urban Development Institute of Australia, Peter Sherrie, said some developers feared they would not have fibre connections on time because of the complexity of connecting new buildings at short notice.

The NBN Co aims to appoint contractors to connect new developments by the end of the month but Mr Sherrie said there was ”a lot of angst” in the industry that the company would be snowed under by developers seeking fibre connections.

”For people who are finishing a project [before NBN Co can] deliver fibre to the premises, there may be some delay,” he said. ”That’s obviously causing us some concern.”

NBN Co’s executive general manager for new development, Archie Wilson, conceded there was confusion among developers but said those facing potential delays had failed to follow the proper process.

He said developers were meant to sign contracts with NBN Co to arrange fibre connections three months before the fibre was needed. However, some were failing to do this, prompting some ”challenging conversations” with the industry.

”There’s a been a change to the industry and not everyone’s read the volumes of communication that we’ve put out there … But we’re pragmatic about it, our job is to roll out fibre and that’s what we’ll do, and we’ll work with the developers to make sure that we get it in at the time they need it.”

The $36 billion network’s roll-out has sparked significant changes for developers because they are now required to install pits and pipes, which they have not previously done. For the NBN Co and its contractors, connecting developments in isolated areas is also a significant challenge.

Mr Wilson said the earliest requests for connection from developers were for late June, and these had been brought to the front of the queue.

Rents on the rise as buyers dry up

By finance reporter Lexi Metherell

Updated April 6, 2011 17:43:00

There are signs rents are starting to pick up again, with potential first homebuyers choosing to lease houses rather than buy.

A report by RP Data shows, after sluggish growth in recent months, national rental rates were 1.4 per cent higher in the March quarter than the same quarter a year earlier.

A senior research analyst at RP Data, Cameron Kusher, says rents are likely to continue to rise because higher interest rates, and a cautious attitude among first homebuyers, mean more people are staying in the rental market.

“The first homebuyers aren’t active so, if they’re not buying their own home, they’re either: a) living with their own parents; or b) they’re out there in rental market,” he explained.

“Although migration’s slowing, we’ve still got a growing population … so all the factors are suggesting to us that rental growth during 2011 will be quite strong.”

Mr Kusher says a fall in new home approvals and housing finance indicates that this trend will continue for some time.

“People are just very conservative out there at the moment, first homebuyers are pretty much a non-event in the market at the moment, and that’s going to create more demand for those rental properties, particularly now that we’re seeing building approvals and dwelling commencements starting to taper off as well,” he said.

The report shows the average national rent was around $360 a week in the March quarter.

Capital city house rents were about $20 a week more expensive than the national average.

However, Western Australia’s Pilbara region has the most expensive average weekly house rent at $1,650, while Tasmania has the cheapest at $235 a week.

In The Door’s premise is simple: Let job seekers use their social graph to find open positions where they might have an inside edge. You need only log in with Facebook and In The Door will find and sort job listings at the companies where your Facebook friends work.

CEO and founder Liz Carlson says she wanted to create the site after she learned that a friend landed a job at Google by way of a recommendation from a mutual friend. Her online job applications, meanwhile, were being automatically rejected by computer algorithms and never reached the desk of a hiring manager or recruiter.

“I wanted to figure out how to digitize the process,” she says of being inspired by her friend’s success with an inside recommendation. “Instead of just seeing a long list of unqualified jobs, why don’t we start by showing companies where you have an inside connection?” she thought.

Carlson took her idea to the Founder Institute, where she participated in the summer 2010 program. Tuesday, she’s ready to launch the bootstrapped Facebook-infused job search site and solicit feedback from users.

The site, in its present state, lets you view all the companies hiring in your network, explore by city and search all the surfaced job listings. The homepage shows friends’ companies that are hiring, with a count of friends employed by the company and jobs available listed next to each company. You can then view a company’s page to check out all job openings and see which of your friends work at the company in the question.

For now, In The Door merely aggregates job listings from third-party job sites such as Indeed. It also leaves the friend-to-friend, “I need a favor…” conversation piece to Facebook. Later, these two pieces will become more tightly integrated into the site experience so that companies can accept applications and recommendations through the site.

Friends-of-friends job search is also in the works. “Users will be able to explore second degree connections,” says Carlson.

At launch, In The Door does a solid job at surfacing positions you might have a better chance landing because you have a friend on the inside.

The startup is giving away 100 invitations to companies who want to personalize their company page and link to their career site.