Book Description

This book aims to define a novel conception of what social entrepreneurship (SE) actually is, and what it is not, starting from a sharp and focused vision of SE: it entails innovations designed to explicitly improve societal well-being, housed within entrepreneurial organizations, which initiate change in society. In so doing, it provides a critical and comprehensive framework for current and future research in the area. Francesco Perrini adopts a novel approach to the SE phenomenon, considering it as a dynamic process created and managed by innovative social entrepreneur (an individual or team) who strives to create new social values in the market and community at large. By now SE has attained a wider and more enthusiastic acceptance in corporate thinking and practice than in the literature. This double line of reasoning, partly theoretical and partly practitioner-based, drives the bottom line of the book. In the first part The New Social Entrepreneurship looks for a consistent answer to a muddle of still-unresolved questions: How can SE be defined? How can SEVs be identified? What are the main dimensions along which organizations vary and what factors lead to success? What does success mean? Does the way in which an SEV is designed matter? Does it make sense to talk about a social business plan? Is an SEV aligned with traditional sources of financing? And so on. In the second part, the book changes perspective, examining several practical examples of how perspectives on SE are translated into concrete phenomena: 'LocalFeed', CafeDirect, The Sekem Initiative, Teleserinita, the NYC Watershed Agreement, and sustainable tourism in Turkey and so on. They illustrate theoretical frameworks, each enlightening specific aspects of SE and making theory and practice comparisons.