Social Entrepreneurship

Brief description

Social Entrepreneurship pursues the goal to create innovative solutions for societal and social problems through entrepreneurial activity in order to initiate a sustainable social transformation. In contrast to the “classic” approach of entrepreneurship, profit is a means for social entrepreneurship to achieve its mission. Success is primarily oriented toward social benefit. In this context, the term “social return on investment” was coined to identify the social value of an economic activity. Thus, social entrepreneurship is characterized by three aspects: the innovative solution, the orientation towards the mission, and the scalability of the idea.

We explore several questions about the differences between conventional businesses and social entrepreneurship. In addition, we look at characteristics in the cultural context and the diffusion of social innovations. A further part of our research is the financing possibilities of social entrepreneurship, e.g. crowd funding. Specifically, we investigate the following questions, such as:

How can social innovations be scaled and diffused by social entrepreneurs and their organizations?

How do social entrepreneurship and commercial enterprises differ in with regard to their own success?

How does social entrepreneurship differ in each country, Germany and China?

In her doctoral thesis, Yue Xiao investigates the difference between social entrepreneurship in Germany and China. In the project Social Entrepreneurship, she researched how social innovations can be scaled and spread by social entrepreneurs and their organizations.