Social entrepreneurship is the part of entrepreneurship in general whose protagonists are people and institutions of the social economy at the service of values that go directly beyond the mere personal economic benefit of entrepreneurs, to develop shared initiatives and networks capable of generate social added value in a broad sense.
The adjectival of entrepreneurship as “social” has the sense of differentiating itself from commercial entrepreneurship, which is aimed at economic activities in general, through the development of new activities and new organizations whose success directly benefits its promoters only indirectly to society in terms job creation or income and wealth generation. Social entrepreneurship is characterized by belonging to the private sector of the economy, and not the public sector.
Both commercial and social entrepreneurship have several points in common, such as the detection of unmet or insufficiently covered needs, innovation in products or services that differentiate entrepreneurial activities from the rest, the design of organizational structures capable of providing such goods and services on an adequate scale, or the initial difficulties of the startup projects (financing, minimum size, initial losses, etc.).
However, in the case of social entrepreneurship, the needs not adequately covered are characterized by being common to large social groups with less purchasing power, or none at all; innovation in products and services is characterized by providing widely shared social connotations in their production, distribution, etc., such as ecological restrictions on production, orientation towards preferred goods, the absence of profit or its reinvestment, etc. . The organizational structures through which the ideas of social entrepreneurship are applied are not market, in some cases, and in others, despite being market in the sense that most of their income from the market,
The financial difficulties of social entrepreneurship are alleviated as far as possible through resources to mechanisms such as patronage, microfunding, resources to the social work of the cooperative movement, the financing lines of some socially responsible entities, participation in incubators or incubators of social enterprises, or some public lines of financing under less restrictive conditions than usual. Often, the initial impulse of all this falls on specific social entrepreneurs, who are people who know in depth the needs of some social sectors with structural difficulties, are capable of organizing a community of potential beneficiaries and developers of the social project,
The current and future potentialities of social entrepreneurship have led the European Union to propose a strategy for its promotion, which contains as main elements:
- Increasing the visibility and recognition of social economy companies in a broad sense (by disseminating their social impact; putting into practice a communication strategy on social entrepreneurship at the EU level; developing international networks in the sector; and the incorporation of social entrepreneurship in all policies, programs and practices of public administrations).
- The development of a European economic environment that allows the social economy and its companies to access financing (in particular to promote the formation of its human capital; to facilitate the financing of its infrastructures; and for the development of incubators or accelerators specialized in social economy companies).
- The establishment of legal and regulatory norms that promote the creation and development of companies operating in this sector (for example, through appropriate social considerations in public procurement).
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