Social Entrepreneurship Summary

The book offers a short, general introduction to social entrepreneurship. The subject spans so much activity today that no small book can adequately cover it. But the authors have tried to address a broad range of questions and point the way for further exploration. The result reflects their biases, which include shared exposures to the field of microfinance in Bangladesh and to the work of Ashoka and hundreds of social entrepreneurs in its fellowship. From the authors’ vantage point, they have exerted a dominant influence on the global field of social entrepreneurship. Others may place emphasis elsewhere. The book is divided in three main parts: Defining Social Entrepreneurship, Challenges of Causing Change, and Envisioning an Innovating

Dees holds that social entrepreneurs do the same for social change, creating new combinations of people and resources that significantly improve society’s capacity to address problems. According to Greg Dee explanation, “social entrepreneurs, create public value, pursue new opportunities, innovate and adapt, act boldly, leverage resources they don’t control, and exhibit a strong sense of accountability.” Other books such as Building Social Business by Muhammad Yunus share similar definition in terms of the social business being able to solve a social problem, but in this book, there is no mention of social entrepreneurship being non-profit unlike in

Before, heading there, the book first talked about the background during the time social entrepreneurship was pioneered. Groundbreaking examples of social entrepreneurship occurred in one of the poorest countries in the world which was Bangladesh. Cyclone and war of independence left the country ravaged. Five Hundred people died from the Bhola Cyclone. In the war of independence, the Pakistani army raped hundreds of thousands of girls and women and caused deaths of more than a million. Starvation and diseases such as Cholera and typhoid took the lives of up to two million more. Ten million refugees fled to India. This generated outrage and sympathy on a global scale. Wealthy countries gave assistance by donating funds and such, but the problem is large amounts of free money will almost always produce corruption, which actually happened. Large amounts of foreign aid have ended up enriching the elites and an estimate of only ten to twenty reached the poor. Foreign aid keep coming until it represented Bangladesh’s ninety percent development budget. Billions were spent on projects—agriculture development, road construction, and electricity generation—that were prioritized by foreign donors and made sense on paper but often fell apart on the ground or produced benefits that bypassed the poor. The legacy of this aid is a culture of dependency and corruption that continues to distort Bangladesh’s economy and