Introduction

Abstract

The concept of social entrepreneurship (SE) is, in practice, recognized as encompassing a wide range of activities: enterprising individuals devoted to making a difference; social purpose business ventures dedicated to adding for-profit motivations to the nonprofit sector; new types of philanthropists supporting venture capital-like `investment' portfolios; and nonprofit organizations that are reinventing themselves by drawing on lessons learned from the business world. In the past decade `social entrepreneurship' has made a popular name for itself on the global scene as a `new phenomenon' that is reshaping the way we think about social value creation. Some of these practices are uniquely new however many have been around for a long time having finally reached critical mass under a widely endorsed label.