Social Entrepreneur or Economic Entrepreneur?

Innovation is the core aspect of any enterprise. Innovation results from a search for a solution to an existing problem, a pain, or an improvement over status quo. An enterprise gathers and deploys all the resources needed to apply the innovative idea to create value. An enterprise that generates economic (or monetary value) is what we think of as a “corporation” in a normal sense of that word. Wealth creation through innovation is the main objective of a corporate entity. On the other hand, the objective of a social enterprise is to create social value, that in turn creates social wealth.

While the wealth created by corporation is distributed mostly to its shareholders, social wealth created by a social enterprise is shared by the society at large (or a community as a component of it). While an economic entrepreneur is motivated by economic return, the social entrepreneur is driven by social change that improves some aspect of society such as community welfare, education, health or ecology. They both need same attributes for success: vision, dedication, leadership and organizational skills. The enterprises – social or economic – are similar in more ways than not. The table below compares and contrasts aspects of these enterprises: