Social entrepreneurship is one of the most popular terms in the nonprofit sector and one of the most misunderstood. Here are some of the ideas of Roger Martin and Sally Osberg from their article “Social Entrepreneurship: the case for the definition “.

1. Introduction to Social
Entrepreneurship

2. Entrepreneurship is:
Innate ability to sense and act on opportunity
Combining out-of-the-box thinking
Unique brand of determination
To create or bring something new to the world.

3. Starting with Entrepreneurship
Jean-Baptise Say – French economist 19th c.
“Shifts economic resources out of an area of
lower and into an area of higher productivity
and greater yield.”
“One who undertakes”
To encompass the concept of
value creation.

4. Starting with Entrepreneurship
Theorists universally associate
Entrepreneurship = opportunity
Entrepreneurs:
Ability to see and seize new opportunities
Commitment and drive to peruse them
Willingness to bear the risks

5. Starting with Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship
“An opportunity context”
A set of personal characteristics:
Identify and pursue this opportunity
The creation of a particular outcome

6. Entrepreneurial context
Fred Smith – the long distance courier service
Sending a package across country – weeks
The system was logistically complex
No one would take responsibility
Slow, unreliable, unsatisfactory service

7. Entrepreneurial context
Entrepreneur thinks creatively
Develops new solutions that breaks with the
existing one
Doesn’t try to optimize the current system with
minor adjustments
Instead finds a totally new
way of approach

8. Entrepreneurial context
• Courage – the process of innovation, the
burden of risk and failure
• Smith – acquired a fleet of jets and built a
gigantic airport and sorting center in Memphis
• To provide next-day delivery without the
package ever leaving FedEx’s possession
• His competitors had only fleets of trucks for
local pickup and delivery

10. Entrepreneurial outcome
• Creates a new stable equilibrium
• Provides meaningful higher level of
satisfaction for the participants in the system
• Raised standards
• New competitors
• A new verb “to FedEx”

11. Shift to social entrepreneurship
• Money
• Altruism
Motivation
Entrepreneurs
• Serve markets
with a new
product or
service
• Underserved,
neglected
population
Social
entrepreneurs

12. Social Entrepreneurship
Identifying a stable, but unjust equilibrium
that causes the exclusion or marginalization
Identifying an opportunity and developing
a social value proposition
Forging a new, stable equilibrium that
alleviates the suffering of the target group
and creation of a better eco-system

13. One World Health
• Victoria Hale- pharmaceutical scientist
• Institute One World Health
• Indian government approved the first drug –
Paromomycin – cost effective cure for visceral
leishmaniasis, a disease that kills more then
200,000 people each year.

14. Boundaries of Social Entrepreneurship
Social
service
• The impact is
constrained, and the
scope is determined by
whatever resources
they are able to attract.
Social
activism
• Influence of influence
rather than on direct
action. (ex: Martin
Luther King, Mahatma
Gandhi, Vackav Havel).

15. Social activists

16. Social activists

17. Social activists

18. Pure forms of social engagement
Direct
Social
Service
Provision
Social
Entrepreneurship
Indirect
-
Social Activism
Existing
System
Maintained
and Improved
New Equilibrium
Created and Sustained