Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship is the product of individuals, organizations, and networks that challenge conventional structures by addressing failures - and identifying new opportunities - in the institutional arrangements that currently cause the inadequate provision or unequal distribution of social and environmental goods.
Social entrepreneurship can further be defined as any action that displays three key characteristics: sociality, innovation, and market orientation. The notion of ‘sociality’ entails a context, process and/or set of outputs that might reasonably be considered to be in the
public benefit. ‘Innovation’ indicates the creation of new ideas and models that address social or environmental issues. Socially entrepreneurial innovation can be manifested in three ways: in new product and service development (institutional innovation); in the use of existing goods and services in new – more socially productive – ways (incremental innovation); in reframing normative terms of reference to redefine social problems and suggest new solutions (disruptive innovation). Finally, ‘market orientation’ here suggests that social entrepreneurship exhibits a performance driven, competitive, outlook that drives greater accountability and co-operation across sectors. Social enterprises specifically address conventional competitive markets, but elsewhere social entrepreneurship broadens the conception of a ‘market’ beyond the merely neo-liberal to suggest that markets establish exchange value and that this is inevitably socially embedded. Thus, market orientation here includes ideas of reciprocity and the common good as well as the rational, utility maximising individual.
Social entrepreneurship can be the product of for-profit or not-for-profit organizations, as well as of many hybrids in between these two poles. It is also found in the public sector.
Professor Greg Dees in his paper "The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship" (Dees, J. Gregory, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, USA, 1998) provided the following definition:
"Social entrepreneurs play the role of change agents in the social sector, by:
- Adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value)
- Recognising and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission
- Engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning
- Acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand, and
- Exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created.
Thus ‘social enterprise’ and ‘social innovation’ are often used interchangeably with ‘social entrepreneurship’ (particularly in the US) [though they are different]."
(Extracted from the Skoll Centre website)
To find our more about social entrepreneurship, visit these web resources:
School for Social Entrepreneurs
1 Mainstareaming of the Mavericks, The Observer, 25 March 2007