The purpose of the conference was to discuss the work on social entrepreneurship of IESE Professor Johanna Mair and Senior Researcher Christian Seelos, who has recently joined the Malik Management Center St. Gallen. According to Mair and Seelos, social entrepreneurship "offers innovative models for the delivery of products and services to meet basic needs that are not served by traditional political and economic institutions". In their view, social entrepreneurship is the "perfect formula to tackle the difficulties encountered in markets at the base of the pyramid (BOP)".

In their research, Mair and Seelos have found that social ventures contribute more to achieving the UN's Millennium Development goals (such as environmental preservation or the eradication of poverty) than conventional companies. That is because, they suggest "working for social sustainability is closely related to economic development".

What's more, the notion that economic development, through technology-driven productivity improvement, somehow brings developing countries "up to date" (catch-up hypothesis) is false, they maintain, because it overlooks countries' "social capability" (i.e. their ability to respond to economic opportunity). This is demonstrated by the fact that productivity convergence since the Second World War (over the period 1950-1980) has affected only a small group of highly industrialized countries.

During the conference, the two researchers presented various business models that companies may use to formulate global strategies that will serve their own sustainable development needs while also serving society's need for innovation.

Although, as they pointed out, "many needs cannot be linked to existing corporate paradigms, value innovation may turn them into a rich source of income".

Specifically, Mair and Seelos have identified three models of collaboration between social entrepreneurs and companies: integrated, symbiotic, and complementary.