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Social Entrepreneurship

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Impact Investing

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance ((SIF))

Abstract

This chapter discusses social entrepreneurship as the underlying basics of impact investing. Social entrepreneurship is the most promising form of addressing societal and/or environmental problems as it combines social and entrepreneurial thinking and there are different forms to address societal challenges. This chapter defines social entrepreneurship and discusses the various definitions. It also differentiates social entrepreneurship to other forms of providing social services and also analyzes different scaling strategies. Social enterprises can use different social business model innovations and six different strategies are discussed to provide some insights.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Defourny and Nyssens (2010) on the “Earned Income School of Thought” because it uses the term “social enterprise” exclusively for social enterprises with income generation.

  2. 2.

    Interestingly, prominent social leaders are often made to face criminal charges as they challenge the status quo.

  3. 3.

    At the time of writing, Etsy was a certified B Corp but not a registered public benefit corporation. There was also speculation about Etsy being a take-over target for other companies.

  4. 4.

    Interestingly, family firms were also found to pollute less than their peers (Berrone et al. 2010).

  5. 5.

    There are different streams. Collective Impact was first discussed by (Kania and Kramer 2011) and Shared Value by (Porter and Kramer 2011).

  6. 6.

    Over time, the conditions for profit-oriented companies may become attractive.

  7. 7.

    There are many applications where digital business models can contribute to the solution. The allocation of food, volunteering time or donations are examples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Management and Economics, Witten/Herdecke University, Witten, Germany

    Wolfgang Spiess-Knafl

  2. Munich Business School, Munich, Germany

    Barbara Scheck

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  1. Wolfgang Spiess-Knafl
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Spiess-Knafl, W., Scheck, B. (2017). Social Entrepreneurship. In: Impact Investing. Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66556-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66556-6_2

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