Social Startup Success


Book Description

With business advice from an expert entrepreneur, learn how to identify and leverage the key factors that will bring sustainability and success to your startup. Kathleen Kelly Janus, a lecturer at the Stanford University Program on Social Entrepreneurship and the founder of the successful social enterprise Spark, set out to investigate what makes a startup succeed or fail. She surveyed more than 200 high-performing social entrepreneurs and interviewed dozens of founders. Social Startup Success shares her findings for the legions of entrepreneurs working for social good, revealing how the best organizations get over the revenue hump. How do social ventures scale to over $2 million, Janus's clear benchmark for a social enterprise's sustainability? ​Janus, tapping into strong connections to the Silicon Valley world where many of these ventures are started or and/or funded, reveals insights from key figures such as DonorsChoose founder Charles Best, charity:water's Scott Harrison, Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code and many others. Social Startup Success will be social entrepreneurship's essential playbook; the first definitive guide to solving the problem of scale.




Social Enterprise in China


Book Description

This book explores social innovation and entrepreneurship in China. Focusing on selected social enterprises and processes, it addresses the question of "why China?", not in terms of military, economic or political ambitions, but in the terms of social innovation and welfare policies. The analyses range from detailed ethnography to discussions of broad global trends. Despite vastly improved social conditions in the country, there are still unresolved issues that social enterprises address. The study elaborates on the complexities involved in their positioning between the state and their beneficiaries. Adding to the complexity is China’s dual system of circulation and the moral economy of ethnic minorities. The theoretical foundation of the study is the Durkheimian concept of the social contract. Its content is viewed as comprised of Maussian total social facts or guanxi, a similar Chinese framing, operationalised to particular socio-cultural configurations. The empirical cases document how social enterprises reposition elements in the various configurations in order to mobilise resources from their stakeholders. The book concludes that the discursive topology is altered in the process and the social contract is renewed in culturally meaningful, if paradoxical, ways. This book will be of interest to researchers, students and academics in the fields of business and social entrepreneurship, especially to those with a particular interest in the Chinese case.




Chinese Entrepreneurship


Book Description

Entrepreneurship is hot. China is hot. Combining these two concepts could therefore be a dangerous act, as it may cause overheating. Chinese entrepreneurs are indeed the subject of a rapidly growing body of literature, academic and popular. However, the bulk of it tends to focus on a few aspects. There are the biographies of ‘famous’ entrepreneurs. While informative, these are usually of a non-academic nature. Academic studies tend to focus on the political and economic environment in which present day Chinese entrepreneurs have to operate. Both types of publications slight the entrepreneurial identity. This study aims at filling this gap with its core question: why do some people become entrepreneurs? The authors have analysed the life stories of a number of Chinese private entrepreneurs to reveal how the entrepreneurial identity of each of them has emerged at the cross section of an number of other identities. This book therefore contributes to a better understanding of Chinese entrepreneurship and the study of entrepreneurship in general.




Shaping Social Enterprise


Book Description

‘Shaping Social Enterprise’ helps researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and international development actors better understand various institutional paths of social enterprise development and where institutional strengths and weaknesses may be located.




Social Enterprise in China


Book Description

Wang offers an empirically based exploration into work-integration social enterprises as a means for delivering social services in China. Focusing on the political economy of social enterprise development in China, Wang examines the nature of the relationship between the state and social enterprises and the implications of such relationships for their institutional effectiveness. She adopts a bottom-up approach that investigates indigenous practices embedded within the local political context. Common ground has been established internationally that the social enterprise model provides new ways of social service delivery that could potentially change and restructure the social welfare economy. However, the development path differs across social contexts, especially in an authoritarian country like China. This study provides insights into China's efforts to develop its social welfare sector and reinvigorate customary ideas about how public services could be better offered given the country's political economy. This book will be of great interest to both scholars of China’s political economy and those with an interest in the development of the social enterprise sector looking to see how this works in a Chinese context.




Social Entrepreneurship


Book Description

This book incorporates theoretical framework and management cases in discussions on social enterprise in China. The authors look to address two fundamental questions about social enterprises in China that have been very controversial over the years. First, what is social enterprise? This book proposes a framework that defines Chinese social enterprises based on social entrepreneurship, and includes ten case studies for justification. Second, who are well-performed social enterprises with financial viability and proved social impact? The book describes in detail some of the leading social enterprises in China. It is aimed at a wide target audience. Practitioners will learn experience and lessons from the case studies. Academics can use the cases in different teaching contexts, and gain research inspirations from our framework and case studies. Policy makers, accreditation agencies, professional service providers, and institutional investors will learn to identify and evaluate promising social enterprises.




Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics


Book Description

Presents a story of two Chinas – an entrepreneurial rural China and a state-controlled urban China. In the 1980s, rural China gained the upper hand. In the 1990s, urban China triumphed. In the 1990s, the Chinese state reversed many of its rural experiments, with long-lasting damage to the economy and society. A weak financial sector, income disparity, rising illiteracy, productivity slowdowns, and reduced personal income growth are the product of the capitalism with Chinese characteristics of the 1990s and beyond. While GDP grew quickly in both decades, the welfare implications of growth differed substantially. The book uses the emerging Indian miracle to debunk the widespread notion that democracy is automatically anti-growth. As the country marked its 30th anniversary of reforms in 2008, China faces some of its toughest economic challenges and substantial vulnerabilities that require fundamental institutional reforms.




Social Entrepreneurship in the Greater China Region


Book Description

This book offers the first exploration into the development of social enterprises in the Greater China region, consisting of Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Mainland China. By drawing on the research and experience of over a dozen scholars and practitioners from across the area, it offers a picture of how a strong State can play an important role as a catalyst in developing the social entrepreneurship sector, particularly by legitimizing it. It delves into the role and impact of institutions and policy on the development of social enterprises, and explains how micro and macro factors might interact in influencing social entrepreneurship. Structured in two parts – policy and cases – it reveals the historical development of the Social enterprises sector in the Chinese context and then illustrates this using cases studies. Providing an alternative view of social entrepreneurship by highlighting the importance of context in this new sector, the book questions whether or not social entrepreneurship is preferable to more conventional models of development. Sparking new interest and offering fresh insight into social entrepreneurship in the Greater China region, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Business Studies and Sociology.




Social Entrepreneurship


Book Description

This book incorporates theoretical framework and management cases in discussions on social enterprise in China. The authors look to address two fundamental questions about social enterprises in China that have been very controversial over the years. First, what is social enterprise? This book proposes a framework that defines Chinese social enterprises based on social entrepreneurship, and includes ten case studies for justification. Second, who are well-performed social enterprises with financial viability and proved social impact? The book describes in detail some of the leading social enterprises in China. It is aimed at a wide target audience. Practitioners will learn experience and lessons from the case studies. Academics can use the cases in different teaching contexts, and gain research inspirations from our framework and case studies. Policy makers, accreditation agencies, professional service providers, and institutional investors will learn to identify and evaluate promising social enterprises.




Social Entrepreneurship and Citizenship in China


Book Description

Over the last thirty years, social entrepreneurship has boomed in the People’s Republic of China. Today there are hundreds of thousands of legally registered NGOs, and millions more unregistered, working in the areas of the environment, education, women’s issues, disability services, community development, LGBTQ rights, and healthcare. The rise of these Chinese NGOs and their implications for civil society merits the focus of significant scholarly attention. This book draws upon the personal stories of social entrepreneurs in China, as well as their supporters and beneficiaries, in order to examine what the rapid growth of social entrepreneurship reveals about China's complex and dynamic society in the 21st century. It discusses the historical, cultural, and political circumstances that allowed and inspired people to become social entrepreneurs and create new forms of democratic engagement. Examining what social entrepreneurship with Chinese characteristics looks like, the book explores how it is changing the relationship between Chinese citizens and the state, and goes on to explain the subsequent effect on Chinese society. Highlighting the importance of citizen activism in the PRC from an interdisciplinary perspective, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Chinese Politics, Civil Society and Sociology.