Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business/or procedures. (Investopedia)

Social Entrepreneur

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. (Ashoka)

Social Entrepreneurship

Takes place when a social value proposition (a solution of some kind) provides wide-scale, lasting systems change for the benefit of society. When the solution helps move a system from an equilibrium that is unjust (where there is suffering, exclusion or marginalization) and helps establish a new, more just, equilibrium then social entrepreneurship is at work. (Sally Osberg and Roger L. Martin, 2007)

Social enterprises

1. Businesses whose primary focus are to use the business to solve social or environmental problems. It is important to understand that social enterprises differ from NGOs and traditional non-profits as their earned income is directly tied to their social mission. (Wolfgang Grassl, 2011)
2. Any enterprise that prioritizes transformative social impact while pursuing financial sustainability. Social enterprises can have nonprofit or for-profit legal structures, but they must have two key elements: 1) A social impact mission: a clear goal to improve lives or the environment and 2) A business model: a strategy for how an enterprise will create, deliver and capture value in a sustainable way. (Acumen)
3. A social enterprise is an operator in the social economy whose main objective is to have a social impact rather than make a profit for their owners or shareholders. It operates by providing goods and services for the market in an entrepreneurial and innovative fashion and uses its profits primarily to achieve social objectives. It is managed in an open and responsible manner and, in particular, involves employees, consumers and stakeholders affected by its commercial activities.  (European Commission)

Social enterprises prioritize social impact, but they must also strive for financial sustainability. While they may rely on philanthropic capital, such as grants, to get their work off the ground, they ultimately look for a model that enables them to stay afloat without a constant infusion of charitable dollars. This is one of the key factors that differentiates a social enterprise from a typical non-profit organization or NGO. This means that, early on in their social entrepreneurship journey, a founder needs to determine the type of revenue engine that can effectively fuel their growth. (Acumen Social Entrepreneurship 101)

Business skills

Running a business requires a diverse set of skills from creative problem solving, to more concrete financial management and organisational development skills such as:

• Business model development and testing
• Financing modelling and financing strategy
• Sales and marketing
• Partnerships, sourcing and organisational development, and
• Ongoing financial management

(Social Traders Australia)

Social business skills:

Smart business centers around providing the customer with a product, service, or experience that is relevant and meaningful to them. Without this connection, no exchange of value is possible. With some creativity and a keen awareness of the system as a whole, social entrepreneurs have the ability to find synergies between players in an ecosystem that were previously invisible or overlooked. These mutually beneficial connections between players can then be matched together, like pieces of a puzzle, to design revenue engines that allow a social enterprise to eventually reach financial sustainability (sometimes in combination with traditional philanthropy). Revenue engines that power social enterprise include structures that can be similar to traditional business, such as selling goods or providing services for a fee. Or, they can be more creative, like cross-compensation models where one target market or product line generates enough revenue to cover the costs of delivering to another group who might not have the same ability to pay. (Acumen)