Entrepreneurship, Second Edition

Chapter 15. SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: AN OVERVIEW

American ice cream makers Ben Cohen (L) and Jerry Greenfield, founders of the brand, Ben & Jerry's give out ice creams for free in their shop in the centre of Amsterdam, The Netherlands on Monday February 22, 2010. (Source: Ade Johnson/AFP/Getty Images, Inc.)

Social entrepreneurs create or apply economically viable models to achieve social or environmental purposes. From 1978, when Bill Drayton started Ashoka to search the world for social entrepreneurs, to the present, we have seen significant growth in both social entrepreneurship education and practice, with hundreds of courses being taught at the university level and the Nobel Prize being awarded to exemplary social entrepreneurs. Drayton originally devised a rigorous screen for identifying and selecting exemplary social entrepreneurs, and by 1981, his organization, Ashoka, would select its first Ashoka Fellow. Today Ashoka has recognized and honored over 2,700 such Fellows in more than 60 countries worldwide.

This chapter is written by John Whitman.

In this chapter, we will begin with a brief review of how social entrepreneurship is different from entrepreneurship. The key difference is in the motivation of the social entrepreneur, who undertakes a venture to carry out a social mission, in contrast to the classical entrepreneur, who seeks a profit.^[] An additional difference ...