Talk:Social enterprise
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[edit] Addition to awards?
Fast Company now does the 2008 Social Capitalist Awards, and I thought of this when I read your page: http://www.fastcompany.com/social/2008/index.html 132.174.194.95 (talk) 19:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Definition
Social enterprise is a phenomenon with at least two conflicting definitions. To Ashoka, Social Entrepreneurship is solving social problems entrepreneurially. Ashoka interprets a social enterprise as organization with a social mission that is either for-profit or with a profit generating component. To the Social Enterprise Alliance it is a non profit using earned income to fulfill part of its mission because of the inneficiency of the non profit capital market. These are related topics, but mean different things to different people. A social enterprise, is a non profit that has a revenue stream from the sale of goods or services. social entrepreneurship is more of a movement. They are related but not the same.
[edit] Merging Social Enterprise/Entrepreneur
I agree that Enterprise and Entrepreneur should not be merged. But Social Entrepreneur should be a subset of the Social Enterprise entry. The definition of a social enterprise should be expanded to include a requirement that "nearly all" or "all" of the revenue is derived from trading. Otherwise, it's simply the trading arm of a charity. Social enterprises, in order to be considered a 3rd economy must be defined by this trait. It is this merging of private and non-profit which makes them unique.
[edit] Prospective merger
I would keep them separate. Social entrepreneurs are not managers of social enterprises, and the organisations they found and start up are not necessarily social enterprises as narrowly defined by parts of the entry / the comment above. Social entrepreneurs tend to be interested in outcomes not process: they don't care so much how they achieve their goals (legal structure / income generation / distribution of profits/surplus etc.) as long as they do. There are obviously connections between the two entries: social entrepreneurs do use what have been considered traditionally as more commercial 'business' methods, and are more opportunistic, risk-taking etc., and many of them found social enterprises (depending on your definition, of course). I write this from a more UK perspective, but I would agree with the top comment above: keep them separate, but linked. However, in response to the comment above, as social entrepreneurship is the wider movement, social enterprise should, if anything, be a subset of its entry, not the other way round.
[edit] Distinctive differences and popular usages
The phrase "social entrepreneur" is currently popular among philanthropists, NGOs, and academics as a distinct form of civic engagement. This usage signifies an important difference with the phrase "social enterprise", which is neither a common or supported usage among the professional communities which purport to conduct these efforts. I would move to keep them as individual entries.
[edit] Very different
Look at the classical definition of "entrepreneurship" as economists define it - it's an individual's reorganization of existing resources that radically improves the rate of return on those resources. Looking at that root, we would conclude that a social entrepreneur is someone who does this in a way that improves the rate of return for society. Social enterprise, on the other hand, refers to the blurring of business and nonprofit boundaries, especially in terms of using business practices to generate income for the organization. Consider this, classic social entrepreneurs such as Florence Nightingale or Martin Luther did not run social enterprises.
I would agree that the two are different - primarily because I've known about the 'social entrepreneurship' business for about 3 years now and I've not once heard of the term 'social enterprise'. ----shmooth- 08:01, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Do not combine: related, but distinctly different
Agree with most of the comments, except for the first comment about subsets. In the U.S. context, social enterprise is more often considered a subset of social entrepreneurship, and not the other way around. However, this is a nit that doesn't affect the question of merger. Don't merge: distinct difference is that there are many respected social entrepreneurs that do not engage in enterprise activities.
