Sharon Zivkovic said autistic founders belong to the older meaning of social entrepreneurship

The first question Kyriakos Gold, who hosted the session, put to the entrepreneurship panel at Think Autism Sydney on 31 May 2025 was one of definition. Most people have heard of social enterprise, he said, so what is autistic entrepreneurship? Dr Sharon Zivkovic, of Community Capacity Builders, answered by going back to the origin of the term, and argued that autistic founders fit the term’s original meaning better than they fit the sector that has since grown up around it.

When the phrase social entrepreneurship was first coined in 1980, she told the panel, it carried a specific meaning, one later taken up as the social innovation school. That school, in her account, concerned systemising and innovation. “It was about addressing the world’s most pressing problems.” She then set out the cognitive traits she associated with autistic people: holding major data sets in their interest areas, innovating with them, systemising with them, and a strong wish to see societal change. Put side by side, she said, the two descriptions matched. “Our strengths align more closely with a social innovation school definition.”