Social Entrepreneurship: An Evidence-Based Approach to Creating Social Value

chapter ONE

The Many Faces of Social Entrepreneurship

In this chapter, we provide a survey of the many faces of social entrepreneurship, summarized as four Ws: What is social entrepreneurship? Who are the social entrepreneurs? Why social entrepreneurship? Where does it occur?

WHAT IS SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

The term “social entrepreneurship” was used first in the literature as early as the 1960s, but it was not until the term was adopted by Bill Drayton in the early 1980s that it began to come into widespread use. Despite a recent growth of interest in social entrepreneurship, researchers have yet to reach consensus on the definition of this emerging concept. For example, the terms “social entrepreneurship” and “social enterprise” are sometimes ...