Week 4: Social Entrepreneurship and Social Change

Why society needs responsible entrepreneurs

Before defining social entrepreneurship, the lecture asks a bigger question: which parts of society solve problems, and what happens to the problems they leave unsolved?

Entrepreneurship is about doing something yourself rather than waiting for others, and about innovation. The module’s working definition of innovation comes from Schumpeter: innovation is a new combination of existing elements such as resources, processes, knowledge, products, services and methods. Most social ventures you will study do not invent new technology; they recombine things that already exist in a way that solves a neglected problem.

Responsible entrepreneurship adds a time horizon. The lecture anchors it in the Brundtland definition of sustainable development and in the idea that entrepreneurs find or create opportunities by understanding people’s needs. For responsible entrepreneurs this understanding is even more essential, because the people they serve are often those whose needs nobody else is meeting.

InnovationSchumpeter (1911)

The re-combination of existing elements — resources, processes, knowledge, products, services, methods and so forth.

Sustainable developmentBrundtland (1987)

Development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Levels of innovationMini-Lecture 4.1 (also Week 1)

The lecture separates three independent ways of judging how new an innovation is. Each is a continuum, so an innovation gets a position on all three.

I

Incremental to radical

How big the change is: incremental innovation makes small, gradual improvements to existing products, services or processes; radical innovation introduces entirely new products, services or ways of doing business (Week 1 tutorial definitions).

Example — Microcredit without collateral was a large change to who could borrow.

N

New to the firm or region to new to the world

Where the idea is new: an idea copied into a new place is new to that region; an idea no one has used anywhere is new to the world.

Example — A proven social franchise opening in a new country is new to that region.

S

Sustaining to disruptive

What it does to the market: sustaining innovations improve established products or services along dimensions mainstream customers already value; disruptive (“game change”) innovations first serve a niche with something simpler, cheaper or more convenient, then move upmarket and displace established competitors (Week 1 tutorial definitions).

How to use it · The Learning Diary asks for the level of your venture’s one innovative element. Place it on each continuum and justify the position with evidence from the venture; do not simply pick the most impressive label.

“Embracing human-centered design means believing that all problems, even the seemingly intractable ones like poverty, gender equality, and clean water, are solvable. Moreover, it means believing that the people who face those problems every day are the ones who hold the key to their answer.”

— IDEO.org (2015, p. 9)

Society’s two powerful problem-solving structures

The state

Solves problems through democratic and bureaucratic competition for solutions.
Its entrepreneurs are “political entrepreneurs”.
Competition for solutions is often imperfect, so some problems never get a satisfying answer.

The market

Solves problems through market-based competition for viable solutions.
Its entrepreneurs are “commercial entrepreneurs” who solve problems to achieve their own objectives.
Problems with no paying customer, or with costs that fall on others, tend to be left unsolved.

Families, religious communities and neighbourhoods still solve many problems, but in modern society the state and the market are the two structures that have proved most powerful. As problems become more complex, both need more sophisticated learning processes, and for many problems neither has yet found a satisfying or even “satisficing” solution. Those left-over societal problems are the space in which responsible entrepreneurs work.

Insight

Society’s “R&D department”

Responsible (social) entrepreneurship cannot substitute for either the market or the government. Its value is as a stimulus for innovation: it experiments with solutions that the market and the state can later adopt, scale or regulate. When you analyse a venture, ask what it teaches the market or the state.

What an entrepreneur needs to make things happen

The entrepreneurial process starts from the entrepreneur’s views (what they want to change) and the entrepreneur’s resources.
Around them sit five forms of support: emotional support, expert knowledge, networks, ideas and feedback, and funding.
In the Learning Diary, these supports are a quick checklist for the “who supports the internationalisation” question: name which of them the venture would need in the new market.

Mini-Lecture 4.1 and Week 4 TutorialOpen the slides

Social entrepreneurship is defined by its purpose, not by its legal form. The module offers two academic definitions, two schools of thought and one “extreme” version: the social business.

Social entrepreneurshipNicholls (2006, p. 43)

“Innovative and effective activities that focus strategically on resolving social market failures and creating new opportunities to add social value systematically by using a range of resources and organizational formats to maximize social impact and bring about change.”

Distinguishing characteristicDees (1998)

The pursuit of social improvement over profit is the distinguishing characteristic of social entrepreneurship.

The tutorial puts the same idea in plainer words: social entrepreneurship is the organisation of a business around specific social and environmental causes, and it includes for-profit and non-profit organisations, charities and for-profit social enterprises. What unites them is motive. Social entrepreneurs’ main drive is to make a difference in the world or in their communities — to create social value and social change.

Social entrepreneurs often have personal or vicarious experience of the cause they support, and that experience shapes their mission (the tutorial points to Wonderbly as an example). Muhammad Yunus is the classic case: he saw skilled craftspeople in a Bangladeshi village held back only by lack of credit, and built Grameen Bank around micro-loans without collateral.

Two schools of social entrepreneurship

Social Enterprise School

Focus: the market income of non-profit organisations — an “earned income strategy”.
Asks: how does the organisation fund its social mission from trading rather than grants?
Its extreme form is Yunus’s social business (see below).

Social Innovation School

Focus: innovation and societal change, with no restriction on legal form.
Social entrepreneurs “establish new and better ways to address social problems” (Dees & Anderson, 2006).
Asks: what is new about the solution, and does it change the system? (Dees & Anderson, 2006; Defourny & Nyssens, 2010)

Social enterprise versus traditional non-profit

Social enterprise

Commercial organisation with its own revenue drivers.
Creates its own source of funding by generating profit from trading.
Directly addresses an intractable social need.

Non-profit organisation

Relies on funding from governmental organisations, grants and donors.
Can pursue the same goal, but its income does not come from selling a product or service.

Ecopreneurship: entrepreneurship through an environmental lens

Mini-Lecture 4.1Open the slides

Ecopreneurship is the environmental sibling of social entrepreneurship. What sets it apart is that environmental innovation is the core of the business and market success is part of the goal.

EcopreneurshipSchaltegger (2002)

“Entrepreneurship through an environmental lens… entrepreneurial activities that are oriented less towards management systems or technical procedures and focused more on the personal initiative and skills of the entrepreneurial person or team to realise market success with environmental innovations.”

Ecopreneurship (short form)Kirkwood and Walton (2010)

Entrepreneurship based on the principles of sustainability.

Three phrases in Schaltegger’s definition do the work. Environmental innovations are the product. Market success is sought, not avoided. And the driver is personal initiative, not a compliance system bolted onto an existing company. That last point is how you separate an ecopreneur from a large firm with a good environmental management department.

Schaltegger (2002) positions environmental actors on two dimensions: how central environmental goals are to the business, and how far its market effect reaches — from an alternative scene, to an eco-niche, to the mass market.

Schaltegger’s (2002) map of environmental actors

Actor	Priority of environmental goals	Market reach	What it looks like
Alternative actors	Environmental performance is core to the business	Alternative scene	Driven by conviction, operating outside mainstream markets.
Bioneers	Environmental performance is core to the business	Niche market	Pioneers of environmental products serving a green niche.
Ecopreneurs	Environmental performance is core to the business	Mass market	Take environmental innovation out of the niche to change the mainstream market.
Environmental management	Environmental goals are supplementary to the core business	Established markets	Existing firms that manage environmental impact alongside their main business.
Environmental administration	Environmental action is seen as a trustee duty	Established markets	Firms that treat environmental protection as an obligation to administer.

Only the first three actors treat the environment as the core of the business. Market-reach labels for the last two rows are described in general terms because the slide places them only graphically.

Common pitfall

Green is not automatically ecopreneurship

A venture that runs recycling workshops to employ young people is primarily social; the environmental benefit is secondary. A venture whose product is an environmental innovation sold to win market share is ecopreneurship. Decide which goal the venture would refuse to give up — that is its primary purpose.

Telling the four types apart (Learning Diary)

Mini-Lectures 1.1 and 4.1; Tutorial 4Open the slides

The Learning Diary asks you to say whether your Ashoka venture is social entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, ecopreneurship or international entrepreneurship — and why it is not the other three. Each type has one decisive test in the module’s definitions.

The four types of entrepreneurship in the module

Social entrepreneurship

Definition: innovative and effective activities that resolve social market failures and add social value systematically to maximise social impact and bring about change (Nicholls, 2006).
Decisive test: is social improvement pursued over profit (Dees, 1998)?
Evidence to look for: a social problem left unsolved by market and state; beneficiaries; social impact as the headline goal.
It is not this type if profit or environmental innovation is the primary aim and social benefit is a by-product.

Ecopreneurship

Definition: entrepreneurship through an environmental lens, driven by personal initiative to achieve market success with environmental innovations (Schaltegger, 2002); entrepreneurship based on the principles of sustainability (Kirkwood & Walton, 2010).
Decisive test: is an environmental innovation the core of the offer, pursued for market success?
Evidence to look for: an environmental product, process or service; customers who pay for it; environmental performance as the reason the venture exists.
It is not this type if the environment is only a supplementary goal, or the main purpose is social inclusion.

Intrapreneurship

Definition: “entrepreneurship within an existing organization” (Antoncic & Hisrich, 2003); an employee’s agentic and anticipatory behaviours aimed at creating new businesses for the organisation (venture behaviour) and helping it react to internal and external advancements (strategic renewal behaviour) (Gawke et al., 2017).
Decisive test: was the venture created by an employee inside an established organisation, for that organisation?
Evidence to look for: a parent company, university, NGO or public body that owns the initiative; the founder’s role as staff member.
It is not this type if the founder started an independent organisation — the usual situation for Ashoka Fellows.

International entrepreneurship

Definition: “the discovery, enactment, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities — across national borders — to create future goods and services” (Oviatt & McDougall, 2005).
Decisive test: does the venture already pursue its opportunity across national borders?
Evidence to look for: operations, partners, franchisees or customers in more than one country.
It is not this type if it operates in one country only. Your diary’s later plan to internationalise it does not make it international entrepreneurship today.

Use it in your assessment

How to argue the classification in the Learning Diary

Use a three-step argument. (1) Claim and evidence: name the type, quote its module definition, and match two or three facts from the Ashoka profile to the words of that definition (for example, “resolving social market failures” → the service reaches people the state and market ignore). (2) Rule out each other type with its decisive test: not intrapreneurship because the founder created an independent organisation rather than acting as an employee within an existing one (Antoncic & Hisrich, 2003); not ecopreneurship because environmental innovation for market success is not the core (Schaltegger, 2002); not international entrepreneurship because it does not yet exploit opportunities across national borders (Oviatt & McDougall, 2005). (3) Handle overlap honestly: if the venture has a secondary environmental or cross-border element, say so, then explain why the primary purpose decides the classification — Dees (1998) gives you the test of social improvement over profit. Rubric note: this is worth 15 marks (Entrepreneurial classification) and supports the 15 for Application of theories.

Worked sequence for one venture

1
Read the Ashoka profile
Note the problem, the founder’s role, who pays, and every country the venture operates in.
2
Find the primary purpose
Ask which goal the venture would refuse to give up: social value, environmental innovation, a new business for an employer, or cross-border opportunity.
3
Apply the decisive tests
Run all four tests from the comparison above and write one sentence of evidence for each result.
4
Name the school
For social entrepreneurship, add whether it fits the Social Enterprise School (earned income) or the Social Innovation School (new solution, any legal form).
5
Link forward
Close by noting what would have to change for it to become international entrepreneurship — this sets up your internationalisation section.

Common pitfall

Common classification mistakes

Calling a venture “international” because Ashoka is a global network (the network is not the venture); calling it intrapreneurship because the founder works with partner organisations (partnership is not employment); listing all four types as partly true without deciding; and defining the types with sources outside the module. Use the module’s definitions as cited above.

Mini-Lecture 4.2 and Tutorial 4Open the slides

Social entrepreneurs do not only deliver services; the most ambitious ones change the rules that created the problem. This section gives you the tools to see the difference.

The market and the state both provide important functions to society, and institutions and organisations are what make them work. The lecture distinguishes the two with a football image: institutions are the rules of the game; organisations are the players who make the moves. North defines institutions as the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interactions, made of both informal constraints and formal rules. Parsons describes organisations as the mechanism that “holds things together” and achieves objectives greater than any individual could.

Entrepreneurs recognise potential for value creation that has been overlooked or not properly exploited. In doing so they build bridges between existing and new systems. A social entrepreneur who changes a rule — who may borrow, who supplies a brewery, who is seen as capable — changes the game, not only one move.

InstitutionsNorth (1990, 1992)

“The humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic, and social interactions. They consist of both informal constraints and formal rules.”

SystemMini-Lecture 4.2

A set of interacting or interrelated entities that form a whole, defined by their boundaries and expressed by their functions.

The iceberg model of systems thinkingGoodman (2002)

Systems thinking broadens the range of choices for solving a problem by helping you state it in new ways. The iceberg shows why: what we see is only the tip, and solutions aimed at the tip stay at the surface.

1
Event
What happened — the visible problem.
Example — Lammsbräu: farmers keep farming non-organically.
2
Patterns or trends
What keeps happening over time. A response aimed only at events or patterns is a surface-level solution.
Example — Traditional methods deliver a known yield, and changing them is risky.
3
Underlying structures
What influences these patterns, and how the parts of the system relate to each other.
Example — Farmers must receive sufficient recompense through the market mechanism to cover their costs. The Tutorial 4 slide sets Lammsbräu’s individual self-commitments beside this level.
4
Mental models
The assumptions, beliefs and values people hold about the system. Solutions that change structures and mental models (new associations, new rules) produce systems change.
Example — “Capitalist rationality promotes competition”, so each farmer expects rivals to sell first. The slide sets the growers’ associations beside this level.

How to use it · The tutorial asks you to complete an iceberg for Dialogue Social Enterprise. For the Learning Diary, an iceberg helps you explain why your venture’s innovation is systemic rather than surface-level.

Social innovation: three fundamental elements (Moulaert et al., 2013)

It addresses needs neglected by the market or the state.
It creates new institutional relations.
It empowers people to transform existing structures.

Connected difference theory of social innovation (Mulgan, 2007)

Social innovations are usually new combinations or hybrids of existing elements, not wholly new in themselves — the same logic as Schumpeter’s recombination.
They cut across organisational, sectoral or disciplinary boundaries.
They create new social relationships between previously separate individuals and groups; these relationships spread and embed the innovation and open the way to further innovations.

How social entrepreneurs innovate (Schumpeter’s creative destruction)

Way of innovating	What it means for a social venture
New product or service	Offer something that did not exist for the target group.
New process or technology	Produce or deliver an existing product, service, programme or project in a new way.
New or underserved market	Deliver an existing product or service to people who were previously excluded — the tutorial calls this social innovation.
New source of supply	Use new sources of raw materials and resources.
New organisation structure	Design the organisation differently, for example as a cooperative or franchise.
New source of labour or inputs	Use new sources of labour or other production inputs, such as employing people others overlook.
New funding model	Create a new way of paying for the solution.
Crossing sectoral boundaries	Renegotiate norms between business, state and civil society — and ask which rules govern each change.

Tutorial slides from both decks. In the Learning Diary, use this list to spot your one innovative element, then label it as process, business model, service or product innovation (types defined in Weeks 1 and 2).

Navigating ambivalence: the extended practical syllogismTutorial 4

Social entrepreneurs face goals that seem to conflict (profit and sustainability, growth and mission). The tutorial offers a simple model of practical reasoning for deciding what to do, illustrated with Dr Ibrahim Abouleish of SEKEM.

1
1. Normative assumption
What is it that we want? The values or goals the venture holds.
2
2. Positive assumption
What is it that we can do? The facts about what is possible and what will happen. Combined with the goal, this gives hypothetical imperatives: “if we want X, then we should do Y”.
3
3. Conclusion
What we should do. A categorical imperative, by contrast, skips the “if…then” and simply commands (“no if… just do!”).

How to use it · The slides warn of two fallacies: the normativistic fallacy and the positivistic fallacy. As the names indicate, each drops one premise — deciding from values alone while ignoring what is feasible, or from facts alone while ignoring what is wanted. A sound argument about a venture’s strategy needs both premises.

Tip

Turn the theory into a diary sentence

A strong diary line connects a tutorial tool to your venture: “Completing the iceberg for Dialogue Social Enterprise showed my group that its innovation works below the waterline, because it changes how sighted people see disability. Applying the same lens to {Ashoka venture}, its {element} changes {rule or relationship}, which Moulaert et al. (2013) describe as creating new institutional relations.”

Week 4 Tutorial and Tutorial 4Open the slides

Social enterprises also cross borders. The tutorial asks how they enter foreign markets while meeting a social need and staying financially successful — and introduces Ashoka, the network your Learning Diary venture must come from.

Global (international) social entrepreneurshipWeek 4 Tutorial slides

The analysis of approaches and models adopted by social enterprises to enter a foreign market with the aim of addressing a social need and being financially successful at the same time.

What international social entrepreneurs (ISEs) need

In-depth understanding of the local context — the social problem looks different in each country.
Networks — they allow the flow of information and learning.
A business model designed around the centrality of the social mission — the tutorial treats this as a condition of success.
Mission-aligned partners — to acquire resources and capabilities, and to gain the trust and legitimacy of the population being served.

Two models for taking a social enterprise abroad

Social franchising

A proven social concept is licensed to local partners who run it in their own country.
Keeps the mission and brand consistent while local partners supply context knowledge and legitimacy.
Example: Dialogue Social Enterprise spreads Dialogue in the Dark through a social franchise system.

Hybrid digital business models

Named in Tutorial 4 as the second route; the slides give no further detail.
In plain terms (the slides do not define it): a social mission combined with digital delivery, so the solution can reach new markets without building full local operations.
Links forward to Week 12 on digital entrepreneurship.

Ashoka is the network the Learning Diary is built around. Founded by Bill Drayton in 1980, it searches for leading social entrepreneurs and selects them as Ashoka Fellows — a life-long fellowship of people championing new ideas that transform society’s systems. Its vision is an “Everyone a Changemaker” world. Ashoka reports more than 3,800 Fellows selected in more than 95 countries.

Selection runs through five phases — nomination, first opinion, second opinion (by an interviewer from a different continent), a panel of local social and business entrepreneurs, and board review. Selected Fellows can receive a living stipend for up to three years so they can work full time on their idea. Because Ashoka has already vetted the idea and the person, a Fellow’s profile is a reliable starting point for your analysis — but it is not a substitute for the venture’s own website and contextual data.

Ashoka’s five criteria for FellowsAshoka (background, not module theory)

Every candidate is assessed against the same five criteria at every step of selection. They explain why most Ashoka ventures are strong examples of the Social Innovation School.

A

A new idea

A new solution or approach to a social problem that will change the pattern in a field — a transformational innovation, not a tweak.

C

Creativity

Creative both as a goal-setting visionary and as a problem solver able to engineer the vision into reality.

E

Entrepreneurial quality

Driven by the vision of solving the problem; will not rest until the idea is the new pattern for society, while grappling with practical “how to” challenges.

S

Social impact of the idea

The idea has the potential to change the field significantly and trigger nationwide impact.

E

Ethical fibre

The entrepreneur must be trusted, because major structural change needs support across many stakeholder groups.

How to use it · The criteria are Ashoka’s, not a module theory, so do not use them as your analytical framework. They are useful for choosing a venture: the “new idea” is usually a good candidate for your one innovative element.

Use it in your assessment

Choosing your Ashoka Fellow

Search ashoka.org (Our Community > Our Fellows, then Find Ashoka Fellows, filtered by country). The venture must be in South America, Africa or Asia — not the EU or elsewhere. That rules out the German tutorial cases (Lammsbräu, Dialogue Social Enterprise) as diary ventures; use them instead in your reflection on tutorial learning. Prefer a Fellow whose profile names the entrepreneur, the product or service, who pays and the key partners, because the diary asks for all four. Being famous is not the same as being an Ashoka Fellow: confirm the founder appears in Ashoka’s directory.

Tutorial activities

Work through these before checking the guidance.

group exercise

Solve a local social problem — and make money doing it

In groups, identify at least one social problem in your home localities and design an innovative way of tackling it that also generates income. Then decide how the solution could be replicated internationally. The tutorial opens with examples of social problems: poverty, lack of safe drinking water, lack of basic healthcare, absence of affordable shelter, landfill methane, deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa and high unemployment.

1.What is the social problem, and why have the market and the state not solved it?
2.What is your innovative solution, and which of the ways social entrepreneurs innovate does it use (new product or service, new process, underserved market, new supply, new structure, new labour, new funding model)?
3.How does the venture earn income, and does it fit the Social Enterprise School or Yunus’s social business principles?
4.How would the solution be replicated in another country, and what would have to change?

case discussionlammsbrau

Thinking in systems with beer: Lammsbräu

Neumarkter Lammsbräu wanted organic hops, grain, yeast and water at a time when going organic meant higher costs and lower yields for farmers. Work through the two dilemmas on the slides and locate where systems change happened.

1.In the trust dilemma, why would farmers refuse to go organic even though both sides could gain?
2.How did Lammsbräu’s self-commitment change the farmers’ incentives?
3.Why did the farmers still say no, and what does the dilemma between Farmer A and Farmer B show?
4.Where do we see systems change? Place each Lammsbräu response on the iceberg.
5.Would you classify Lammsbräu as ecopreneurship or social entrepreneurship? Why not the other?

videoGrameen Bank: Muhammad Yunus and microcredit

Breaking the poverty trap: Muhammad Yunus and Grameen

Watch the video on Muhammad Yunus (Social Entrepreneurship: Pioneering Social Change) and use the tutorial’s “poverty trap” slide to explain what rule of the banking system Grameen changed.

1.Why were the poor locked out of conventional banking?
2.What opportunity did Yunus see, and what was new about it?
3.Is Grameen social service provision or social entrepreneurship in Martin and Osberg’s (2007) terms?
4.Which of the seven principles of social business does Grameen illustrate?

case discussionSEKEM: Ibrahim Abouleish and navigating ambivalence

Navigating ambivalence: Ibrahim Abouleish and SEKEM

Tutorial 4 uses Dr Ibrahim Abouleish to introduce a simple model of practical reasoning for decisions where goals seem to pull in different directions.

1.What did Abouleish want (normative assumption), and what could he do (positive assumption)?
2.What did he conclude he should do?
3.Give an example of the normativistic fallacy and of the positivistic fallacy in a social venture’s decisions.
4.Is SEKEM best classified as social entrepreneurship or ecopreneurship? Argue both sides, then decide.

group exercisedialogue-social-enterprises

Complete an iceberg: Dialogue Social Enterprise

Complete an iceberg for Andreas Heinecke’s Dialogue Social Enterprise, answer the guiding questions, begin a Theory of Change and open the Impact Ladder template.

1.What is the societal problem?
2.How did the social entrepreneur identify the problem?
3.Has this problem already been addressed by the state or the market?
4.What is the key idea of this example?
5.What is the social or environmental innovation?
6.Are there novel institutions or organisations?
7.Who benefits from the product or service directly, and how indirectly?
8.Are the stimuli for learning in the state or the market?

videoTOMS: the One for One model

Is this social entrepreneurship? TOMS

Watch the tutorial video explaining social entrepreneurship through TOMS and test the One for One model against this week’s theory.

1.Which way of innovating from the creative destruction list does One for One represent?
2.Does TOMS create social value or social change in Martin and Osberg’s (2007) terms?
3.Does TOMS meet Dees’s (1998) test of social improvement over profit?

individual exercise

Start your Learning Diary: pick and classify an Ashoka venture

Part 2 of both tutorials introduces Assessment 1. Shortlist two Ashoka Fellows from South America, Africa or Asia and draft the classification paragraph for your preferred one.

1.Who is the entrepreneur, what does the venture offer, and in which country does it operate?
2.Which of the four types is it, and which facts match the words of the module definition?
3.Why is it not each of the other three types?
4.Which innovative element might you analyse, and which tutorial case can you compare it with?

Cases

Full analysis, questions and takeaways on each case page.

Grameen Bank: Muhammad Yunus and microcreditBangladeshChanging the collateral rule to let the poor borrow — the tutorial’s model of social business.Read the case SEKEM: Ibrahim Abouleish and navigating ambivalenceEgyptA holistic venture in the Egyptian desert used to teach practical reasoning when goals seem to conflict.Read the case TOMS: the One for One modelUnited StatesA for-profit giving model that tests the line between social value and social change.Read the case

Key terms

Responsible entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship that tackles societal problems left unsolved by the market and the state; it cannot replace them but acts as society’s “R&D department”.
Social entrepreneurship: Innovative, effective activities that resolve social market failures and add social value systematically to maximise social impact and bring about change (Nicholls, 2006); social improvement over profit is its distinguishing feature (Dees, 1998).
Social Enterprise School: View of social entrepreneurship that focuses on the market income of non-profit organisations — an earned income strategy.
Social Innovation School: View of social entrepreneurship that focuses on innovation and societal change, with no restriction on legal form (Dees & Anderson, 2006).
Social business: The “extreme” social enterprise: social purpose + no loss + no dividend, governed by the seven Grameen principles (Yunus, 2007; Yunus & Weber, 2010).
Ecopreneurship: Entrepreneurship through an environmental lens, driven by personal initiative to achieve market success with environmental innovations (Schaltegger, 2002).
Intrapreneurship: Entrepreneurship within an existing organisation (Antoncic & Hisrich, 2003).
International entrepreneurship: The discovery, enactment, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities across national borders to create future goods and services (Oviatt & McDougall, 2005).
Institutions: Humanly devised formal rules and informal constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction — the rules of the game (North, 1990).
Social innovation: Innovation that addresses needs neglected by market or state, creates new institutional relations and empowers people to transform structures (Moulaert et al., 2013).
Iceberg model: Systems-thinking tool (Goodman, 2002) with four levels — events, patterns or trends, underlying structures and mental models; solutions aimed only at events or patterns are surface-level.
International social entrepreneur (ISE): A social entrepreneur entering foreign markets to address a social need while staying financially successful; needs local context knowledge, networks, a mission-centred business model and mission-aligned partners.
Social franchising: Spreading a proven social enterprise model to other countries through local partners who run it under the same mission and format.
Ashoka Fellow: A social entrepreneur selected by Ashoka against five criteria (new idea, creativity, entrepreneurial quality, social impact, ethical fibre); the Learning Diary venture must be run by one.

Check your understanding

10 questions · instant feedback · best score saved on this device

1/10

According to Dees (1998), what distinguishes social entrepreneurship?

Flashcards

Recall first, then flip.

1 / 14

References and sources

As cited in the module materials. Check each against the original before using it in an assignment.

Antoncic, B. and Hisrich, R.D. (2003) ‘Clarifying the intrapreneurship concept’, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 10(1), pp. 7–24.
Beckmann (2009) Cited in Mini-Lecture 1.3 and Tutorial 4 (Lammsbräu case); full details not given in the module materials.
Brundtland (1987) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.1; full details not given in the module materials.
Costales, E. and Zeyen, A. (2023) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.2 (Social Innovation and Systems Change); full details not given in the module materials.
Dees, J.G. (1998) The meaning of social entrepreneurship. Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, pp. 1–6.
Dees and Anderson (2006) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.1; full details not given in the module materials.
Defourny and Nyssens (2010) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.1 (as “Defourney & Nyssens”); full details not given in the module materials.
Gawke, J.C., Gorgievski, M.J. and Bakker, A.B. (2017) ‘Employee intrapreneurship and work engagement: a latent change score approach’, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 100, pp. 88–100.
Goodman (2002) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.2 (iceberg model); full details not given in the module materials.
IDEO.org (2015) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.1, p. 9; full details not given in the module materials.
Kirkwood, J. and Walton, S. (2010) ‘What motivates ecopreneurs to start businesses?’, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 16(3), pp. 204–228.
Martin and Osberg (2007) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.2 and Tutorial 4; full details not given in the module materials.
Maslow (1970) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.1; full details not given in the module materials.
Moulaert, F., MacCallum, D. and Hillier, J. (2013) ‘Social innovation: intuition, precept, concept’, in The International Handbook on Social Innovation: Collective Action, Social Learning and Transdisciplinary Research, p. 13.
Mulgan, G. (2007) Social innovation: what it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated.
Nicholls, A. (ed.) (2006) Social entrepreneurship: new models of sustainable social change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
North (1990, 1992) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.2 and Tutorial 4; full details not given in the module materials.
Oviatt, B.M. and McDougall, P.P. (2005) ‘Defining international entrepreneurship and modeling the speed of internationalization’, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 29(5), pp. 537–553.
Parsons (1960, 2003) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.2, p. 17; full details not given in the module materials.
Schaltegger, S. (2002) ‘A framework for ecopreneurship: leading bioneers and environmental managers to ecopreneurship’, Greener Management International, (38), pp. 45–58.
Schumpeter, J. (1911) The theory of economic development. Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. XLVI.
Yunus, M. (2007) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.1; full details not given in the module materials.
Yunus, M. and Weber (2010) Cited in Mini-Lecture 4.1; full details not given in the module materials.

Written from these course files

Responsible Entrepreneurship and the Social EnterpriseMini-Lecture 4.1 · PPTX · 26 slides · 7.8 MB Social Entrepreneurship, Social Innovation and Systems ChangeMini-Lecture 4.2 · PPTX · 23 slides · 11 MB Social Entrepreneurship and International Social EntrepreneurshipWeek 4 Tutorial · PPTX · 28 slides · 22 MB Social Entrepreneurship and Social Change: Case StudyWeek 4 Tutorial (case deck) · PPTX · 48 slides · 38 MB Entrepreneurship and InnovationMini-Lecture 1.1 · PPTX · 17 slides · 8.9 MB International Entrepreneurship and the International New VentureMini-Lecture 1.2 · PPTX · 17 slides · 5.0 MB BUSI1764 Module Handbook 2026–27 (FA26)Module Handbook · DOCX · 25 pages · 0.1 MB

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