What is the greatest good you can imagine doing in your lifetime? — Dr. Kunal Parikh

On January 29th, the Social Innovation Lab and SAIS Social Enterprise Accelerator collaborated to host its annual Social Enterprise Bootcamp. The Bootcamp aims to provide students at Johns Hopkins University with an opportunity to learn more about social enterprises and honing skills essential to launching an impactful organization.

In addition to knowledge and skills-building workshops, the Social Enterprise Bootcamp featured guest speaker and serial social entrepreneur Dr. Kunal Parikh.

Kunal kicked off the conversation with Bootcamp participants by posing a key question that we should all be asking ourselves:

What is the greatest good you can imagine doing in your lifetime?

For Kunal, he has dedicated his life towards impact efforts around healthcare and vision equity — both as an academic and entrepreneur.

On the academic front, he currently serves as a faculty member with the Center for Nanomedicine at the Wilmer Eye Institute and Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design in the Biomedical Engineering Department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHU).

In addition to his academic role, Kunal leads the Global Institute for Vision Equity, a collaborative, needs and stakeholder-driven initiative working to enable equity in eye care globally through design and development of novel solutions addressing critical needs in ophthalmology and designed for the patients, care providers, and context of care in under-resourced settings. He is also Co-founder and President of Access HEARS, a social enterprise providing affordable, accessible hearing care in Maryland.

Kunal is also one of the co-founders and leaders of the Social Innovation Lab (SIL) at JHU. Founded in 2011, SIL is now a formal initiative housed at Johns Hopkins Tech Ventures and supported by President Ron Daniels’ office as part of the university’s commitment to strengthening ties to the Baltimore community.

Before coming to JHU, he was also the CEO of Core Quantum Technologies, a venture-backed biotechnology company developing superior imaging, detection, and targeting reagents.

Greatest lessons learned as an Entrepreneur

Sharing his key ‘lessons learned’ from more than a decade as an entrepreneur, Kunal encourages others thinking of walking a similar path to ask hard questions of themselves. We share here some of these key lessons:

1. Ask yourself: Why do I want to start a company? This “why” has to be strong enough to push you through the challenges of going from 0à1.

2. Is this endeavor worth 10 years?

3. Team, timing, and alignment matter. Have you aligned the right people at the right time to execute on this opportunity?

4. Partner with and recruit individuals with high energy, high intellect, high integrity, and who are thinking long-term.

5. The market matters. Larger markets give you more optionality, more room for error, and more upside to attract the best investors and talent.

6. Have hard conversations as soon and as often as possible with all of the key stakeholders in your company.

7. Find and reward the people that can transform your company.

8. That persistent thought in the back of your head will be your downfall.

9. Innovation is not a 9–5 job.

10. Great innovations come from great problems/needs.

11. Innovation is often a process, rarely an epiphany.

12. Spend on speed.

13. No matter how tough things seem, remember that there is always a move you can make. Be open to all possibilities.

14. Compassion, gratitude, and relationships will help you go far.

Read more about the origins of SIL and Kunal’s role: For the greater good | Hub (jhu.edu)