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Entrepreneurs are transforming business models and building new, strategic markets in a way, and at a pace, that large corporations and governments often cannot emulate. Moreover, corporate responsibility ensures sustainability says, Peter Conze, Country Director, German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) South Africa, Lesotho & Botswana in a whitepaper on Social Responsibility in South Africa.

Conze further elaborates, “Around the world, companies are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of their activities. They are striving to make their business decisions more sustainable by applying the principle of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the company, in the wider environment they operate in, and in their relationship with suppliers and customers. In line with their own economic interests, businesses – small and large, domestic and international – are starting to share responsibility for the ecological and social situation in their immediate environment. Examples include the protection of human rights, drawing up and implementing employment and environmental standards and minimising corruption.”

However, small businesses often fail at a critical stage in their growth phase due to inadequate operational backbone and inadequate guidance on how innovation comes into play for them. That’s where business incubators come to help: A recent report by the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) and FNB’s Entrepreneurial Dialogues, State of Entrepreneurship in South Africa, indicated that “business incubators assist emerging companies to survive and grow during the start-up period, when they are most vulnerable. The incubation process improves the survival rate of start-up companies by assisting them in becoming financially viable, usually within two to three years.”