From Social Entrepreneurship to Social Innovation Sample Clauses

From Social Entrepreneurship to Social Innovation. ‌ Much like its parent field of entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship focuses on the personal quali- ties of people who start new organizations, and it celebrates traits like boldness, accountability, re- sourcefulness, ambition, persistence, and unreasonableness36. In contrast, the field of social enter- prise tends to focus on organizations. Although some pockets of work explore broader issues of managing social purpose organizations, most research on social enterprise focuses on commercial activities, earned income, and for-profit ventures that give financial and operational support to tradi- tional social service programs.37 The terms social entrepreneurship and social enterprise both have their roots in the nonprofit sec- tor, and as a result they tend to limit their domains to nonprofits, implicitly or explicitly excluding public and for-profit organizations.38 Although scholars have made valiant efforts to broaden pre- vailing conceptions of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise, their efforts have had little in- fluence on the composition of affinity groups and funder choices.39 The underlying objective of virtually everyone in the fields of social entrepreneurship and social en- terprise is to create social value (a term we define later). People have embraced these fields because they are new ways of achieving these larger ends. But they are not the only, and certainly not al- ways the best, ways to achieve these goals. Social entrepreneurs are, of course, important because they see new patterns and possibilities for innovation and are willing to bring these new ways of do- ing things to fruition even when established organizations are unwilling to try them. And enterprises are important because they deliver innovation. But ultimately, innovation is what creates social value. Innovation can emerge in places and from people outside of the scope of social entrepreneur- ship and social enterprise. In particular, large, established nonprofits, businesses, and even govern- ments are producing social innovations. In addition, social innovation is grounded in the robust academic literature on innovation. Relative to the research on entrepreneurship, research on innovation defines its concepts more precisely and consistently. As a result, this research is a stronger foundation for building knowledge about new ways to produce social change.40 Indeed, even the godfather of entrepreneurship, the Austrian econ- omist Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxx, was interes...