Author FAIDON ZARAS  (I.M. PANAGIOTOPOULOS SCHOOL, GREECE)

Traditional entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs

In terms of the people involved in the SE sector, again there are similarities and differences between entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs. Both are people strongly motivated by the opportunity they identify, pursuing that vision relentlessly, and deriving considerable psychic reward from the process of realizing their ideas.

The social entrepreneur, however:

• does not anticipate or seek to create profit, instead he or she aims to achieve a specific transformational benefit for a specific segment of society or society in general, 

• does not come up with a value proposition that assumes a market can pay for the innovation in hope of profit but articulates a value proposition that targets a neglected, or highly disadvantaged population that lacks the power to achieve change by itself. 

This does not mean that social entrepreneurs cannot form value propositions that include profit-making and thus social enterprises may be either profit or nonprofit organisations. 

In a classic and idealized definition Dees considers the social entrepreneur as ‘a change agent who works through a mission to create social value and the search for new opportunities to achieve that mission. Where others see problems, social entrepreneurs see opportunities. The will to innovate is part of the entrepreneurs’ modus operandi, and it should not be understood as a sudden explosion of creativity, but as a continuous process of exploration and learning. Furthermore, entrepreneurs tend to have a high tolerance for ambiguity and learn to manage the risks associated with it. They see failure as a learning opportunity and act responsibly, using scarce resources efficiently, calculating risks so as to reduce the harm that will result from failure’ (Dees 2001).