The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is more than a world-renowned social science academic institution. We are a global impact-driven entrepreneurial ecosystem – connecting the most ambitious past, current, and future innovators and entrepreneurs, in the UK and beyond, through LSE Generate, the School’s homes for entrepreneurship.

We are entrepreneurial because we have 3Ps – people, purpose, and profit.

As LSE students and alumni are interested in studying and solving real-world challenges; our founders care and dare to create impactful businesses to challenge the status quo. For instance, The Lowdown, founded by Alice Pelton, is on the mission to make women’s health less of a minefield. Since 2010, around 800 graduates per year have started their own businesses. To date, we have more than 23,000 founders in our entrepreneurial community from all over the world. With huge pool of exceptional talents from LSE, Generate’s Mentorpreneurship engages entrepreneurs in a ‘life-cycle’ of mentoring and provides the best network and supportive environment for LSE entrepreneurs and their businesses to flourish.

“For the betterment of society”, has always been and will always be the ‘why’ of LSE innovators and entrepreneurs, driving them to grind and hustle through challenges they might face throughout their entrepreneurial journey. We are of the belief that all entrepreneurship is social and if not, it is anti-social. In alignment with our belief, all businesses come through Generate’s funding competition, accelerator programmes, and numerous events that we run has to attain at least one UNSDGs, ensuring our resources enact positive change for the future.

Although we place an emphasis on purpose, LSE entrepreneurs build commercially viable businesses that have strong socially responsible values, rather than businesses with simply a not-for-profit focus. We believe purpose and profit are on the same level and work in lockstep. To date, LSE entrepreneurs have built more than 19 unicorns (private companies with a valuation of more than USD$1 billion), bringing LSE to the top among the ‘unicorn’ universities. Indeed, the Mentorpreneurship initiative would not be possible without the partnership with OakNorth Bank, one of the LSE unicorns.

Since day one, LSE Generate believes that by backing the best founders of tomorrow we can create a pipeline of globally impactful businesses to change the world. This is a model that relies on extremely talented individuals focused on improving the lives of global citizens to create exponential return of impact through enterprise. Taking home the Outstanding Entrepreneurial University award would be a strong validation to this belief and more importantly, a recognition to all of the effort offered by every member within the LSE entrepreneurial community to support impact-driven social sciences businesses.