Social entrepreneurship and social innovation both seek to improve the world through social change. Whereas social entrepreneurship revolves around the business side of change, social innovation focuses on the processes through which that change is generated. This textbook provides a comprehensive analysis of both topics, covering all the characteristics and elements of social innovation and social entrepreneurship, from a conceptual and practical perspective. The book has four sections: 1) Basics and concepts of Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship; 2) Business models and generation of value in social enterprises; 3) Social innovation within traditional companies, and 4) Definition and alignment of the impact of social innovation and entrepreneurship. Students and any practitioners that want to know about social innovation or social entrepreneurship will be exposed to contemporary topics in the field as well as a variety of cases and tools for its development. With its learning objectives, reflective questions, the definition of key concepts, and exercises, this book is the definitive text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in social innovation and social entrepreneurship.

This accessible textbook provides a comprehensive guide to the building blocks of sustainable social enterprise, exploring how core elements contribute to either the success or failure of the social venture. It analyzes the key skills needed to synthesize effective business practices with effective social innovation and points out both what works and what does not. Taking a practical approach, it demonstrates how big ideas can be transformed into entities that produce lasting change.

Sustainable entrepreneurship has attracted growing attention in both scholarly and practitioner circles. Focusing on generating social, environmental and business value, the notion has been raised more recently to address the contribution of entrepreneurial activities to sustainable economic and social development. Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation builds on a theoretical framework that addresses related topics via a combination of insights from sustainability, policy, managerial, strategic, innovation and institutional perspectives. Providing empirical casework as well as a conceptual and theoretical framework, the book takes a global, interdisciplinary approach to the emergent field of sustainable entrepreneurship. The book highlights elements of sustainable entrepreneurship which have a societal impact as well as regional relevance and related aspects of innovation are also presented. Definitional issues are further elaborated in order to encompass the main inter-connected fields of study, sustainable entrepreneurship and social innovation. This book is an important resource for academic researchers, and postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students in the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability.

In recent years, social innovation has experienced a steep career. Numerous national governments and large organisations like the OECD, the European Commission and UNESCO have adopted the term. Social innovation basically means that people adopt new social practices in order to meet social needs in a different or more effective way. Prominent examples of the past are the Red Cross and the social welfare state or, at present, the internet 2.0 transforming our communication and cooperation schemes, requiring new management concepts, even empowering social revolutions. The traditional concept of innovation as successful new technological products needs fundamental rethinking in a society marked by knowledge and services, leading to a new and enriched paradigm of innovation. There is multiple evidence that social innovation will become of growing importance not only concerning social integration, equal opportunities and dealing with the greenhouse effects but also with regard to preserving and expanding the innovative capacity of companies and societies. While political authorities stress the social facets of social innovation, this book also encompasses its societal and systemic dimensions, collecting the scientific expertise of renowned experts and scholars from all over the world. Based on the contributions of the first world-wide science convention on social innovation from September 2011 in Vienna, the book provides an overview of scientific approaches to this still relatively new field. Forewords by Agnès HUBERT (Member of the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) of the European Commission) and Antonella Noya (Senior Policy Analyst at OECD, manager of the OECD LEED Forum on Social Innovations)

This book argues that embeddedness and community participation bring unique propositions for social entrepreneurship to foster social inclusion. It uncovers the role of local knowledge and grassroots level innovations to create necessary environment for the positive social change to roll. Social enterprises have proven to reduce drudgery of poor and excluded by offering creative and innovative solutions for long standing social problems. The grassroots level creative problem solving mechanisms they initiate travel through a variety of local dynamics and cultural contexts. However, social innovations quite often do not achieve their intended results, especially when they fail to understand the local contexts and embed themselves in such dynamism. In this background, the book attempts to understand and analyse the 'connect' between the social innovations and local dynamism. It argues that the community-driven innovation management which is based on local knowledge inspires the social entrepreneurial process and builds capacities and infrastructure to foster social inclusion. Each chapter in this book offers development scholars rich narration about how social problems have been approached, addressed, and altered through rich insights from communities and the social entrepreneurial teams.

In development circles, there is now widespread consensus that social entrepreneurs represent a far better mechanism to respond to needs than we have ever had before--a decentralized and emergent force that remains our best hope for solutions that can keep pace with our problems and create a more peaceful world.David Bornstein's previous book on social entrepreneurship, How to Change the World, was hailed by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times as "a bible in the field" and published in more than twenty countries. Now, Bornstein shifts the focus from the profiles of successful social innovators in that book--and teams with Susan Davis, a founding board member of the Grameen Foundation--to offer the first general overview of social entrepreneurship. In a Q & A format allowing readers to go directly to the information they need, the authors map out social entrepreneurship in its broadest terms as well as in its particulars.Bornstein and Davis explain what social entrepreneurs are, how their organizations function, and what challenges they face. The book will give readers an understanding of what differentiates social entrepreneurship from standard business ventures and how it differs from traditional grant-based non-profit work. Unlike the typical top-down, model-based approach to solving problems employed by the World Bank and other large institutions, social entrepreneurs work through a process of iterative learning--learning by doing--working with communities to find unique, local solutions to unique, local problems. Most importantly, the book shows readers exactly how they can get involved.Anyone inspired by Barack Obama's call to service and who wants to learn more about the essential features and enormous promise of this new method of social change, Social Entrepreneurship is the ideal first place to look.

Social innovation and social entrepreneurship look for creative and affordable solutions to specific societal problems. Fuelled by the spread of the internet and the ubiquity of mobile phones, there are more people working to solve pressing social and environmental problems in the world today than ever before. Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation presents the journeys of pioneering - and often accidental - social innovators who, faced with a problem, used their courage, tenacity and creative thinking to find a solution. Using their own words to reflect upon their experiences, these cases do not gloss over the setbacks and the dead-ends social entrepreneurs can face. Instead, readers will gain a realistic insight into the challenges and an engaging look at the problem-solving mindset needed to overcome them. From a life-saving project to bring solar-powered lighting to midwives in Nigeria, to a news dissemination service that's grown from small beginnings to have a global impact, each case study draws out the lessons learnt by the innovators, providing guidance and advice for those looking to follow in their footsteps. Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation is an invaluable resource for social entrepreneurs and innovators looking for new ideas and insight into what really works - and what doesn't.