HOPES: HEC Opens the Door to Social Entrepreneurship
HOPES (HEC Ouvre la Porte à l’Entrepreneuriat Social in French) is a large-scale initiative led by HEC Paris and supported by the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller. More than a program, HOPES is a long-term commitment to making social entrepreneurship a powerful, inclusive, and measurable lever for professional integration and social transformation across France.
Running from 2024 to 2028, the initiative combines business training, acceleration support, and academic research to empower individuals, strengthen social economy organizations, and advance knowledge on entrepreneurship as a driver of inclusion.
Ambition and objectives of the initiative
HOPES starts from a straightforward premise: entrepreneurial skills can change trajectories. Behind every entrepreneur is a moment of decision: to back yourself, take the leap, and bet on your own potential. For too many people, that moment never comes. Not for lack of ambition, but lack of access.
Entrepreneurship, when made accessible, breaks that unfairness, and that's precisely where HOPES was built to act.
The initiative is built around three objectives:
- Raise awareness of entrepreneurship among more than 10,000 women and young people over five years, across mainland France and overseas territories. Because access to this world shouldn't depend on where you were born or who you know.
- Scale support for social economy organizations, by increasing the number of structures accompanied through Accélérateur ESS, a dedicated social and solidarity economy (SSE) accelerator.
- Produce and disseminate knowledge through a dedicated research program on social entrepreneurship and innovation, which ensures that what is learned in the field feeds back into practice, and into the broader conversation about what sustainable social inclusion actually looks like.
Together, these pillars are designed to remove barriers to action, unlock overlooked talent, and make the case, with proof, that entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful levers for lasting social change.
HOPES supports various programs built around these goals:
- HEC Stand Up,
- Accélérateur ESS,
- Jeunes Innovateurs
All three programs are developed and delivered by the Social Entrepreneurship Center at HEC Paris, while the research is led by the Sustainability & Organizations Institute/Center.
HEC Stand Up: Supporting women toward financial independence
In France, financial vulnerability often intersects with a lack of resources, confidence, and access to professional networks. HEC Stand Up, created in 2018, was designed to address just that. The program offers women a concrete pathway to financial independence through entrepreneurship, regardless of where they're starting from.
HEC Stand Up is free and open to all women, no matter their age, educational background, or social origin, in particular those facing socio-economic vulnerability. This program meets participants exactly where they are. It arms them with real business tools, wraps them in a sisterhood that carries them through the toughest moments, and creates a confidence-building journey that fundamentally shifts how they see themselves — and what they dare to dream possible.
HEC Stand Up is built around three pillars that go hand-in-hand: self-confidence and mindset, taking action, and core business skills. Indeed, a woman who understands the numbers but doesn't believe in herself won't move forward. Similarly, one who has drive but no business fundamentals will hit a wall. That’s why HEC Stand Up works on all three, together.
Since its inception, the program has reached key impact figures:
- Nearly 4,500 women supported since 2019;
- Over 1,500 women certified ‘HEC Stand Up’;
- A presence across 8 territories in metropolitan France and overseas.
And the impact extends beyond entrepreneurship: women who go through the program show measurably improved employability even when they return to salaried work. A sign that what they gain here is transferable and lasting.
Listen to the 'Dix Fois Plus' Podcast (in French)
"Starting out on your own is difficult, especially when you don't have any training in business, accounting, marketing, etc. After HEC Stand Up, my revenue had already increased by 15%. But what the program really changed for me was this realization: I have the right to be myself. My project, the DNA of my company, is me, and I'm no longer afraid to say so." - Mamie Stella, Founder of a startup that makes fabric playhouses for children
Across the different cohorts, participants point to the same transformations: greater legitimacy, a clearer vision, and a confidence they didn't have before. That shift from doubt to ownership is at the heart of what HEC Stand Up is designed to create.
Accélérateur ESS: Scaling Impact of Social Economy Organizations
Working at the individual level is powerful, but lasting social impact also requires the organizations that serve the communities to grow stronger and built to last. That's where Accélérateur ESS comes in.
Accélérateur ESS is designed for Social and Solidarity Economy organizations at a pivotal stage of their development: structures with real impact already underway, and the ambition to go further. The program is built for the long run. Over a 24-month journey tailored to each organization's strategic and operational maturity, participating structures benefit from a comprehensive support framework combining mentoring, consulting, targeted training, and peer networking.
This ecosystem gives leaders the space to step back from day-to-day constraints to think bigger, position more strategically, and tackle the challenges that matter most: growth, governance, and impact measurement. The objective is to help social economy organizations scale their impact while building the foundations for sustainable growth.
What participants highlight is the collective intelligence, the cross-organizational synergies, and the long-term perspective that the accelerator fosters. For many, it marks a decisive turning point in their development trajectory.
"Joining the Accélérateur ESS program was a tremendous opportunity to grow my structure and meet inspiring entrepreneurs. A wonderful partnership with Alicia Izard, CEO of Eloquentia, created a natural synergy between our projects, with her teams participating in our training sessions. ‘Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, working together is success,’ as Henry Ford said." - Mouna Viprey, Founder of Impact Confiance - Class of 6 (2023-2025)
Seven years in, the numbers tell their own story:
- Over 100 structures accompanied across 8 cohorts since 2019
- More than €220 million in combined revenue
- +9,000 jobs represented across participating organizations
Since its launch in the Île-de-France region, the accelerator has expanded its reach, extending its support to organizations in the South of France (PACA) and Normandy.
Learn more about Accélérateur ESS IDF
Learn more about Accélérateur ESS SUD
HEC Jeunes Innovateurs: Unlocking the Potential of Young People
Since the decree of November 29, 2023, all 10th-grade students in France must complete a two-week internship to explore career paths. Yet nearly 30% struggle to secure one, often due to a lack of professional networks, a gap that disproportionately affects students from modest backgrounds.
To address this inequality, HEC Paris created Jeunes Innovateurs, a program recognized by the Ministère de l’Éducation nationale as an alternative to the compulsory internship.
Delivered directly in high schools by STMG teachers trained by HEC Paris, the program transforms the internship into a collective entrepreneurial experience. Over two weeks, students work in teams to identify a real-world problem, design an innovative solution, and present their ideas through a structured pitch.
Beyond entrepreneurial skills, the program builds confidence, creativity, and a sense of agency, encouraging students to project themselves into ambitious futures.
In 2025, 120 students from six high schools completed the program. A first step in expanding access to opportunity.
Learn more about Jeunes Innovateurs
Advancing Knowledge Through Research and Impact Measurement
Doing good isn't enough. Understanding what works, and why, is what turns impact into lasting change. Alongside its programs, HOPES has built a structured research effort designed to rigorously measure outcomes, generate knowledge, and ensure that every iteration of its support models is informed by evidence.
The research program is currently in its exploratory phase, but the foundations are already solid. Drawing on an extensive review of academic and sector literature, combined with in-depth interviews with key stakeholders across the social entrepreneurship ecosystem, early findings are already pointing to measurable progress on dimensions that matter deeply: self-confidence, assertiveness, social connections, and psychosocial skills. For individuals facing socio-economic vulnerability, these are often the decisive factors.
These insights are treated as tools for continuous improvement, allowing support models to evolve based on what demonstrably works.
Building on this initial phase, the research program will expand into more ambitious studies, focusing in particular on:
- The role of social capital in entrepreneurial trajectories
- The development and impact of psychosocial competencies
- Entrepreneurship as a response to structural and long-term vulnerability
And the findings won't stay within HEC Paris: In line with HOPES' commitment to transparency and collective progress, data, analyses, results, and best practices will be widely shared, contributing not only in improving its own programs, but to the broader field of social entrepreneurship, for the benefit of public, academic, and institutional actors working toward the same goals.
A Great Step Forward for Inclusion in Entrepreneurship
With HOPES, a long-overlooked reality finally takes center stage in the entrepreneurial conversation: talent is universal, opportunity is not. For too long, entrepreneurship has remained the preserve of those who already master its codes, inherit the right networks, or follow linear paths. HOPES was built on the refusal to accept that, and on the conviction that changing who gets access to entrepreneurship is, ultimately, changing who gets to shape the world.
Behind HOPES stands a partner that shares its founding conviction: the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller. Through a commitment running from 2024 to 2028, the Foundation backs an initiative it recognizes as doing what social entrepreneurship does at its best: giving determined people the tools to find and create their place in society.