Social Entrepreneurship
Rose Spiegel
Rationale
5.7.13
Everyone describes social entrepreneurship differently. While many have been able to describe the traits and features of a social entrepreneur there doesn’t seem at all to be a consensus about the definition of what constitutes the field of social entrepreneurship. Susan Davis and David Bornstein in their book, Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know define social entrepreneurship as “a process by which citizens build or transform institutions to advance solutions to social problems such as poverty, illness, illiteracy, environmental destruction, human rights abuses and corruption (1). The NYU Reynolds Program defines it differently saying “Social entrepreneurship is a form of leadership that maximizes the social return on efforts to change the world while fundamentally and permanently changing the way problems are addressed on a global scale” while the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at The University of Oxford defines social entrepreneurship as the “practice of combining innovation, resourcefulness and opportunity to address critical social and environmental challenges.” And the variation continues. Throughout the past six and a half semesters at Gallatin I have found that this wide array of definitions for the term “social entrepreneurship” while challenging in determining my course study, has allowed me to see the ways in which social entrepreneurship can be applied outside of its commonly accepted framework of mission driven for-profit organizations.
The amorphous boundaries of the field of social entrepreneurship are not like those of the traditional public, private and citizen sector, which are more distinctly defined by purpose as well as legal structure. Social entrepreneurship can encompass organizations and work in all three of these domains. This leaves room for cross-sector cooperation, the sharing of resources (whether its human capital, social capital, financial capital etc.) and more
Rationale
5.7.13
Everyone describes social entrepreneurship differently. While many have been able to describe the traits and features of a social entrepreneur there doesn’t seem at all to be a consensus about the definition of what constitutes the field of social entrepreneurship. Susan Davis and David Bornstein in their book, Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know define social entrepreneurship as “a process by which citizens build or transform institutions to advance solutions to social problems such as poverty, illness, illiteracy, environmental destruction, human rights abuses and corruption (1). The NYU Reynolds Program defines it differently saying “Social entrepreneurship is a form of leadership that maximizes the social return on efforts to change the world while fundamentally and permanently changing the way problems are addressed on a global scale” while the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at The University of Oxford defines social entrepreneurship as the “practice of combining innovation, resourcefulness and opportunity to address critical social and environmental challenges.” And the variation continues. Throughout the past six and a half semesters at Gallatin I have found that this wide array of definitions for the term “social entrepreneurship” while challenging in determining my course study, has allowed me to see the ways in which social entrepreneurship can be applied outside of its commonly accepted framework of mission driven for-profit organizations.
The amorphous boundaries of the field of social entrepreneurship are not like those of the traditional public, private and citizen sector, which are more distinctly defined by purpose as well as legal structure. Social entrepreneurship can encompass organizations and work in all three of these domains. This leaves room for cross-sector cooperation, the sharing of resources (whether its human capital, social capital, financial capital etc.) and more