I have, for quite some time, struggled with the association of profit with “Social Entrepreneurship”. Should it be or should it not be? I have my own views on it, but I wanted to explore some expert’s opinion before I pen my naïve views.
SE has been defined in various ways. To quote a couple:
Asoka foundation: Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change.
Wikepedia: 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 s/he has on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.
Skoll Centre: 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.
School for social entrepreneurship: A social entrepreneur is someone who works in an entrepreneurial manner, but for public or social benefit, rather than to make money. Social entrepreneurs may work in ethical businesses, governmental or public bodies, quangos, or the voluntary and community sector.
The list can go on. For me the common thread is
- Unmet social need
- Entrepreneurial capability to resolve the need
This obviously leads to explore the definition of entrepreneur:
Wikepedia: An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. An ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to create and market new goods or services
All the other definitions are (surprisingly) fairly close to Wikepedia’s.
Now why am I rambling with these definitions?
The reason is that I am not able to reconcile that “social entrepreneurship” can exist without an attempt to make profits. When I say attempt to make profits, I mean that a revenue generation source and an income statement. The firm might be a loss making enterprise, with loans/grants/donations also as a revenue stream. This is what differentiates SE from normal charity. The entrepreneurship mindset would mean taking risk, generating resources, fighting against all odds, resolve the problem and at the same time generate revenue.
The confusion creeps in when at all these sites, one sees great charity work, great social causes being identified as SE. People doing great work in charity or not for profit organisations for social issues like AIDS, cancer, poverty alleviation, education are referred to as social entrepreneurs.
Is my thinking too narrow and the definition broader or do we need to look at the definition?
