In a thoughtful conversation on Georgetown Entrepreneurship’s Create the Future podcast, Jeff Reid, professor of the practice and director of the Entrepreneurship Initiative at the McDonough School of Business, sat down with Father Quentin Dupont, S.J., to explore a deceptively simple question: what does it really mean to build a venture for the common good? The answer does not begin with a business model or an impact metric. It begins with a human question: does this venture help people flourish?

That framing matters because the phrase “common good” can feel abstract, even academic. As Dupont explains, the idea has been defined many different ways over time, but one especially useful interpretation goes back to Aristotle: the common good is whatever promotes human flourishing. In that sense, entrepreneurship for the common good is not a niche category reserved for nonprofits or mission-driven startups. It is a way of understanding entrepreneurship itself.

At a time when entrepreneurship is often framed around speed, valuation, and scale, this interview offers a different lens. It asks founders to think not only about what they are building, but who they are becoming while they build it.

Definition of the Common Good

Reid explains that Georgetown’s entrepreneurship community has spent significant time wrestling with language. Terms like “social entrepreneurship” and “impact” can be helpful, but they also leave some founders feeling like doing good is separate from building a profitable company. That split can be limiting.

Dupont offers a broader and more grounded alternative. If a founder identifies a real need, creates a product or service that helps people do something better, or builds a venture that brings more meaning to their own work, that venture is already participating in the common good. In each case, entrepreneurship improves some part of human life. It solves a problem, reduces friction, expands access, or gives the entrepreneur a deeper sense of purpose.

Seen this way, the common good is not an add-on to entrepreneurship. It is embedded in the act of building something useful. A founder does not need to choose between value creation and positive impact. When a venture genuinely helps customers, employees, partners, or the founder themselves flourish, it is already contributing something meaningful.

Why does this idea resonate beyond Social Entrepreneurship”?

Not every entrepreneur has to wear the label of “social entrepreneur” to care about impact. Reid notes that many business builders reject the implication that only some ventures are socially valuable while others are purely commercial. Plenty of companies aim to make a profit and still improve lives in tangible ways.

Dupont pushes this even further. He argues that entrepreneurship is often driven by one of three motivations: responding to a need in the world, creating easier access to goods or services, or seeking more meaning in one’s own work. Each of those motivations has a connection to flourishing. Each can make life better for someone.

That is a helpful reframing for founders who want to build sustainable businesses without adopting language that feels overly narrow or ideological. It invites entrepreneurs to ask not whether they qualify as “impact founders,” but whether their work is helping life improve for real people.

The Entrepreneur’s Inner Life Matters

The conversation becomes especially compelling when it moves from philosophy into practice. Reid points out that the impact of a venture is not limited to customers, employees, suppliers, or the environment. Entrepreneurship also shapes the entrepreneur. It affects identity, meaning, and the ability to live out one’s calling.

Dupont connects this to the Jesuit tradition of discernment, especially the idea of “deep desires.” Founders take risks, invest money, absorb uncertainty, and persist through obstacles because something important is driving them. Building a venture is often an expression of what matters most to them.

That means entrepreneurship is not only about external outcomes. It is also about paying attention to whether the work is aligning with what feels deeply true and life-giving. A venture can grow revenue while draining the founder. It can also create the kind of energy, clarity, and fulfillment that signals the work is aligned with a deeper purpose.

The Entrepreneur’s Examen

To help founders reflect on that alignment, Reid and Dupont adapted a centuries-old Jesuit practice called the Examen. Traditionally, the Examen invites a person to review the day and notice moments of consolation and desolation.

Consolation refers to those moments when life feels coherent and connected. In the entrepreneurial context, that may look like a conversation that clarifies the mission, a customer interaction that confirms the value of the product, or a stretch of work that feels deeply meaningful. Desolation, by contrast, points to the friction: the draining relationship, the recurring conflict, the task or pattern that repeatedly pulls the founder away from joy, focus, and purpose.

The Entrepreneur’s Examen turns that insight into a practical reflection tool. Instead of asking founders only how fast they are growing, it asks where the venture is creating life and where it is creating drag. What relationships are helping the business flourish? Which ones keep getting in the way? What parts of the work bring energy? What parts consistently diminish it?

Over time, that kind of reflection reveals patterns. And patterns are strategic. The founder begins to see what to keep doing, what to redesign, and what to let go.

A Tool For Any Founder, Not Just Faith-Based Ventures

A key point throughout the interview is that this framework is not limited to religious entrepreneurs. Reid explicitly notes that these tools are relevant whether or not someone is Catholic, Christian, or religious at all. Dupont agrees. The language may come from Jesuit spirituality, but the underlying practice is deeply human: paying attention to what brings fulfillment and what blocks it.

That universality is part of what makes the idea powerful. A founder can use the Entrepreneur’s Examen to improve customer experience, strengthen team dynamics, make wiser decisions, and reconnect with the original purpose behind the business. This is not only about “doing good” in a vague sense. It is also about building a better company.

In the interview, Dupont notes that if the reflection helps an entrepreneur deliver on their promises more effectively and improve life for customers, that is already a form of promoting the common good.

Why This Conversation Matters

That shift feels especially timely. More entrepreneurs are looking for ventures that are commercially viable and deeply meaningful. They want businesses that solve real problems, create genuine value, and align with their sense of purpose. Reid and Dupont offer a language for that aspiration: entrepreneurship for the common good.

It is not soft. It is not anti-profit. And it is not reserved for a select few. It is a disciplined way of seeing entrepreneurship as a force for human flourishing.

For founders, that may be the most important question of all: not just whether the venture is growing, but whether it is helping people, including the founder, flourish.

 

The Entrepreneur’s Examen: Where to Begin

Find a quiet space to relax and focus.

Remember your “Why.” 

What compels me to build this venture? What is its deeper purpose?

Reflect on flourishing. 

How does my venture promote the good… 

…through the way the business interacts with customers?

…through the treatment of my employees?

…through relationships with my supply chain? and with other partners? 

…through impact on the local community?

…through effects on the environment, “our common home”?

…through the meaningfulness of my venture to me as I realize my calling, and contribute to flourishing for the good of others?

Review your day (or week, or month) and ask: 

Where did my “Why” come alive? Bring to mind some concrete examples. 

Where did frictions or distractions appear? 

Are there patterns? What can I do differently? 

Return to gratitude. 

Recall your purpose. Give thanks for the chance to build something meaningful – for yourself and for others.