The Pros And Cons Of Social Entrepreneurship

scarce resources to empower all segments of the population, often through collective bargaining power. SE are not exclusively motivated by financial interests; rather, they are driven by the objective to provide goods or services to the community, particularly minority populations (i.e., a social purpose). This process further enhances the generation of collective externalities which may be leveraged for communal wellbeing. The founder of the Ashoka Fellowship, William Drayton (Leviner N. et al, 2012), first coined the phrase “social entrepreneurship” being a process in which an entrepreneur conceives and explicitly seeks new solutions to entrenched social issues.

SEs are multi-stakeholder enterprises which combine the ownership interests

- business networks as development of social incubators, accelerator programs, mentoring and coaching, professional services of various kinds (legal, marketing, fiscal, accounting, governance, HR etc.)
- development of skills for social entrepreneurship and innovation as courses for social entrepreneurs, university programmes, mobility scheme etc.
On the demand side, social entrepreneurship is influenced by:
- public procurement and commissioning of socially innovative goods and services;
- supporting private demand through tax incentives and subsidies;
- developing the national knowledge base and measuring impact and outcomes;
- development of national cluster policies, support for R&D cooperation in the social sphere
Influenced by favorable and well-developed ecosystem social enterprises have high potential to generate significant social, economic and environmental impacts and to contribute to the achievement of Europe 2020 Strategy goals for opening socially sustainable jobs, facilitating social integration and improving the quality of social