Social Entrepreneurship is the use of business practices such as business planning, project management, marketing and sales, for advancing social causes. Social entrepreneurs combine the passion of a social mission with business-like discipline, innovation, and determination. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.
There have been numerous attempts at defining Social Entrepreneurship. The Skoll Foundation defines a social entrepreneur as follows:
"Society's change agent: a pioneer of innovation that benefits humanity."
However, the broadest definition is given by Wikipedia:
“Social entrepreneurship is the work of a social entrepreneur. A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact she or he has on society.”
There are three key components that emerge out of this definition and are more of less common when it comes to other variations of the definition of Social Entrepreneurship:
The problem
A sustainable solution
Social change
The main aim of social entrepreneurship is to further social and environmental goals. Although social entrepreneurs are often non-profits, this need not be incompatible with making a profit. A typical example is the social entrepreneur Bunker Roy, who created the Barefoot College in rural communities in India to train illiterate and semiliterate men and women, whose lack of educational qualifications keeps them mired in poverty. Today Barefoot College graduates include teachers, health workers and architects who are improving communities across India, including hundreds of "barefoot" engineers who have installed and maintain solar- electrification systems in over 500 villages,...