Introduction of Meaning and Concept Social Entrepreneurship
Social Entrepreneurs are individuals who are willing to create positive changes in society through their innovative ideas and efforts. They run their business or organization to achieve their goals by helping society. Their motto to start a business venture is primarily to help society and have no great intention of making personal profits. Their success is not always measured in terms of profit alone. A small change in the society out of their efforts is a success too. Social entrepreneurship is also referred to as altruistic entrepreneurship –which translates to selfless concern for the well-being of others.
There are many environmental and social problems out there and social entrepreneurs identify those problems and come up with innovative ways, and establish or adopt a business model around it. By presenting user-friendly and adaptable ideas to the local people, social entrepreneurs are generally looked up to as leaders or role models for driving philanthropic projects and bringing a large group of people to believe in their initiative. In the recent past, there have been many social entrepreneurs or philanthropists who have made immense success and proven to the public that not all needs of society are to be solved by the Government. Any person with a vision and the ability to bring change can do it.
Below are a Few Examples of Leading Social Entrepreneurs
Vinoba Bhave (India) was the leader and founder of the Land Gift Movement. He led to the redistribution of around 7,000,000 acres of land that later on helped the landless and untouchables of India.
Dr. Maria Montessori (Italy) – The Montessori approach to early childhood education was developed by her.
Elon Musk, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX caused Musk to become an explorer of social entrepreneurship in the modern era, as he pursued to create solutions that are accessible to renewable energy and push the bounds on space exploration for the human race.
Social entrepreneurship has similarities and distinctions when compared to the standard definition of entrepreneurship
Importance of Social Entrepreneurs
Social Impact and Inspiration: the origination of a social enterprise is an existing gap or problem that an individual identifies and has a solution for. Social entrepreneurs’ works tackle the existing problem of society, they do not intend to create legacies and are an inspiration to society.
Make the World a Better Place: Social entrepreneurs are obsessed and extremely passionate about the initiative and work towards the goal against all odds, and can go to any extent to see that society is problem-free. It is the social entrepreneurs who can bring drastic changes to culture, business, and economy while they make a living out of it.
Generation of Social Capital: One of the most important values and powerful influences created by Social entrepreneurs is the equation established by social groups through interpersonal relationships, a shared sense of identity, and a shared understanding in their network that helps people to ‘get by, accept and get ahead’ with changes.
Factors the Strengthen Social Entrepreneurship
How the Project Contributes to the Economy: Having known social entrepreneurship is for the society or environment, it also means there is or has been a demand for the product or service. Most entrepreneurial initiatives contribute to the economy, by creating job opportunities and wealth. The social enterprise thus established must aim at generating enough wealth that can contribute to society.
Responsibility Towards Society and Environment: The primary intention of social enterprise is to identify gaps in the environment and society that are not working efficiently and create a social value out of those. Aimed at bringing in a change and something new to solve a certain problem, these objectives can vary from industries, health services, education, energy-saving, etc. A lot of corporate entities form a small trust to implement these objects in the form of Customer Social Responsibility (CSR) projects.
Effective Profit Utilization: As discussed, earlier social entrepreneurs are not aimed at making personal profits, their profits are often re-invested in the business to achieve the goal, personal profits are hence supervised and are limited. However, depending upon the status of the project, the entrepreneur can decide how much is to be reinvested to achieve the goal.
Efficiently Managed: Unlike the standard entrepreneurship framework, social entrepreneurship can involve a group of people working together with the same intention of bringing a change to society. Hence, the decision-making, execution of tasks, etc. are all shared and are done with the active participation of all experts at different levels. Here, making use of participation efficiently is the key.
Conclusion
Entrepreneurship has been the booming and most pursued carrier option in recent times. Many top college graduates have set up their own companies and thrived excellently in their respective domains. Entrepreneurs lookup for a gap in the demand and supply chain in the market and using their agencies of creativity, innovation, and resourcefulness they find a solution in the form of a product or service that will fill in the gap.
Thus, they bring in the market something that is in great demand already. This way they are able to generate a good amount of sales and hence earn a good profit as well. Entrepreneurship is mostly pursued as a career option because it gives the liberty of being your own boss and also to exercise your creativity and innovativeness with no restrictions. Once launched well and settled up, it brings up a lot of opportunities for expansion and collaboration. The profit one generates is also better than what one may have got while doing a job.
More about Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship is the one branch of this tree that is not much concerned with the money or royalties that they may avail after being an entrepreneur. Social entrepreneurs are more concerned with the betterment of society and work in the direction accordingly, though they also look for profit margins, it is very marginal and their main aim is the enhancement of socio-economic conditions. They may or may not already have a good amount of wealth. If they don’t, they mainly try to launch that company or industry which will lead to the development of jobs, create a money flow in the local economy and utilize the skills of the local artisans. This way they ensure that the local skill potential is utilized and also that profit is generated. On the other hand, if they have a good amount of wealth they will try to manage the resources properly and develop employment opportunities for the local population without caring much about their own profit.
Social entrepreneurship has become a very critical driving force in the national and local economies of the country. This type of entrepreneurship has been incorporated into the policies of govt as well and govt has subsidized many such establishments which pursue the development of the local economy.
Social entrepreneurship has been also admired by the local populations as well because these ventures create a great positive impact regarding enhancing the lives of local people in terms of monetary security and job creation.
FAQs on Social Entrepreneurship: Meaning and Impact
1. What is Social Entrepreneurship?
When any entrepreneurs, individuals or groups develop and implement solutions to environmental and social issues, it is termed as social entrepreneurship. This type of concept applies to many organizations. Social entrepreneurship takes care of the development of the community and health care and also helps in the alleviation of poverty. Often they are associated with the civic or social sector of the non-governmental organizations. These sectors are also termed as the third sector.
2. What are the Challenges Faced in Social Entrepreneurship?
Since social entrepreneurship is new to the world, there are several challenges faced by them. A few of the challenges are listed below:
In every business setup, there come several times when the financial conditions are disturbed. During such instances, raising funds becomes very difficult. Most of the investors look forward to the short-term investments that can benefit high. Sometimes, businesses are impacted due to the reduced global economy. At this time, the social entrepreneurs face difficulty in raising funds.
A better business plan serves as the base for achieving higher milestones. Being a social entrepreneur, they lack in setting up better business plans. Due to this reason, the profit margin of the business gets reduced leading to low raise of funds.
Investing in the right business or people also plays its part.
Social entrepreneurs look to the world as an activist rather than business people. Merging proper vision with the business is also a challenge social entrepreneurs need to face.
3. Is every entrepreneur a social entrepreneur?
Every social entrepreneur is an entrepreneur but the inverse is not true. This is because a social entrepreneur is an entrepreneur who is not more concerned about the monetary aspects of entrepreneurship but is more associated with creating opportunities for the local people so that their standard of living is raised and there are better chances of economic development. Both the entrepreneurs have the same qualities of creativity, resourcefulness, innovation, and risk-taking, but social entrepreneurs are a little fewer risk-takers than entrepreneurs because risk-taking is mostly involved in factors where monetary aspects are of more consideration than other factors.
4. How is the entrepreneurial approach of social entrepreneurs different from others?
Social entrepreneurs are very much careful in the aspects of risk-taking and investment. The reason is that sometimes the part of the investment belongs to the local population which has to be handled very sensitively as it is their hard-earned lifelong saving, in monetary or other forms. This makes the social entrepreneur more vigilant and prudent regarding the aspects of risks involved in a particular venture and he always evaluates the risks very neatly.
5. Is Social entrepreneurship better for India?
Social entrepreneurship is very much appreciated and supported in India, by the government, and by the local people as well. There are multiple govt schemes for the issuance of grants, subsidies, infrastructure, and other essentials for the development of a social entrepreneurship venture. As a developing nation, social entrepreneurship in India has immense potential for growth and development. There are multiple international schemes as well that support the building of such ventures which will alleviate poverty by ensuring cash flow in the local economy and generation of employment opportunities.
6. How do social entrepreneurs evolve their ideas?
Social entrepreneurs are very adroit when it comes to the development of an idea for implementation at the local and national levels. They identify a gap between the demand-supply chain of the market and find a local skill potential that will enable them to fill that gap. If a gap isn’t existing as such, they’ll create a gap by marketing and advertising. After this, they look for opportunities for funding and potential investors to help them finance the initial start of the venture and give their business establishment an initial kick start. Then they go on incorporating the skills available and create a new block for themselves in the market and as such, they connect the demand required and the skills available.
