Barely a decade ago, if prospective MBA students had typed “social entrepreneurship” into a search engine, it would have generated a few thousand results. Today, that figure is nearer 100m.

The reason for this, says Sándor Nagy, associate director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, based in Switzerland, is that more people are “seeking meaning in what they do”, exploring how their business ideas can benefit the environment or deprived communities.

One catalyst for this shift in attitudes was the recent financial crisis. “People were looking for a ‘new capitalism’ and found that social enterprise can provide a philanthropic and profitable model,” says Nick Badman, chairman of the Peter Cullum Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cass Business School in London.