Social Entrepreneurship is Entrepreneurship

Definition Social Entrepreneurship

There are several definitions of Social Entrepreneurship. In the SesyCare application we defined it as: ‘A social entrepreneur is a person who pursues novel applications that have the potential to solve community-based problems. These individuals are willing to take on the risk and effort to create positive changes in society through their initiatives.’

Wikipedia Definition Social Entrepreneurship

On Wikipedia they define Social entrepreneurship as ‘an approach by individuals, groups, start-up companies or entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues.’ Wikipedia is a volunteer-run project, a very interesting and succesfull entrepreneurial source format of ‘what you would like to know about certain topics, persons, institutions, organisations and companies. Why people always go to Wikipedia to know more about a certain topic or to get a definition is not clear for me. Wikipedia is not a reliable source and overrated (it does not have a scientific trademark). Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time. This means that any information it contains at any particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or just plain wrong…

Social Entrepreneurship is Entrepreneurship

We should not overcomplicate things. My definition on the topic social entrepreneurship is pretty clear:

‘‘Social Entrepreneurship is Entrepreneurship (with a Social Product and / or Service)’. It does not matter if your poduct or your service is to improve social issues through your businesses. You can only successfully tackle social issues while generating profit… You can only make a loss with your social enterprise for a short period, in the end you will go down without a profitable business model, unless your shareholders/ owners are (local) government(s). Keep in mind that due to an unhealthy ideology and neverending funding by local governments the chances on staying a social enterprise making (big) loss are more or less forever.

This article is part of a presentation given by Pieter van Schie MA on Zoom d.d. December 18th 2020 for the project Sesycare