The usefulness of networks: A study of social innovation in India

Abstract

India has seen a recent and rapid emergence of social enterprise as a potential alternative development channel. Social enterprises, defined in this chapter as organisations that combine a focus on financial sustainability with an explicit commitment to social impact through their products and/or employment and sourcing strategies, offer new and innovative ways of providing goods, services and livelihood opportunities for the poor. In other words, social enterprise is a hybrid - Operating with the social impact objectives of an NGO and the market-driven financial aims of a for-profit firm. Social enterprise, therefore, involves the reconfiguring of social relations between the private sector market and civil society (Allen et al., 2012; Koh et al., 2012).