Group of construction workers and a businesswoman on a building site. People wearing hard hats and safety vests, two individuals are shaking hands.
Three children in colorful clothing
Group of people working collaboratively at an outdoor cafe table surrounded by lush greenery.
People working in an urban rooftop garden, woman picking vegetables, man using tablet, plants and buildings in background.
Group of diverse coworkers smiling and stacking hands as a team gesture around a table with charts in an office setting.

Civic wealth refers to a community’s economic, social, and communal assets and endowments —both tangible and intangible. It is a broad indicator of the social, intellectual, and material resources, capacities, and capabilities of a segment of society.

What is Civic Wealth?

Two paper cutout figures giving a high five on a blue background.

Civic Wealth Creation

Civic wealth creation is a term that describes what occurs when communities, entrepreneurs, and supporters of local initiatives coalesce to improve their well-being and vitality through cooperation, kinship, and commerce. It comes about in neighborhoods and villages, in cities and towns, and in regions where diverse stakeholders and regular citizens collaborate, participate, negotiate and agree to take action to make things better.

Meet Sophie Bacq, PhD 

Sophie Bacq

A globally recognized thought leader in social entrepreneurship, she was named on the 2024 Thinkers50 Radar list of management thinkers to watch, and recognized among the top 2% of scientists worldwide by Stanford University. In her 20 years of research on the topic, conducted in Europe, the United States and South Africa and published in the top academic journals, Sophie investigates and theorizes about entrepreneurial action aiming to solve intractable social and environmental problems at the individual, organizational, and civic levels of analysis. 

Sophie is the Co-Director of The Annual Social Entrepreneurship Conference, the premiere global research conference focused on social entrepreneurship and impact. She has received the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Award in Social Entrepreneurship both for Excellence in Scholarship (2021) and Excellence in Programming/Events (2022). In 2019, she received the Emerging Scholar Award for her innovative and impactful contributions to entrepreneurship scholarship from the Entrepreneurship Division of the largest association of management scholars, the Academy of Management. She has also received research funding and recognition from the Swiss National Scientific Foundation (700,000 CHF) and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Every summer, Sophie teaches a unique, award-winning intensive Social Entrepreneurship Doctoral Seminar for junior researchers. 

Currently, Sophie is Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and the Coca-Cola Foundation Chair in Sustainable Development at IMD. Before joining IMD in 2023, she was the Larry and Barbara Sharpf Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Indiana University Kelley School of Business (2019-2023), Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business in Boston (2012-2019), and a Visiting Scholar at New York University Stern School of Business (2010-2012). A native of Belgium, she received her doctorate from the Université catholique de Louvain (2012). 

Civic wealth creation is a term coined by Tom Lumpkin and Sophie Bacq while researching social entrepreneurship. In 2020, their paper “Civic wealth creation: A new view of stakeholder engagement and societal impact” received the Academy of Management Perspectives Best Article Award.

The information and examples presented on this website underline ongoing collective efforts to understand and encourage civic wealth creation.