The state’s reduced role in the provision of social services, especially in some countries such as the USA or the UK, and the increasing entrepreneurial approach of third sector organizations, have led to the rise of social entrepreneurship which has become a “practical response to unmet societal needs” (Haugh, 2007:743). Our globalized world has created numerous unmet societal needs such as stabilizing climate (Gore, 2006; Stern, 2006), the sustainable use of limited natural resources (WWF, 2008) and overcoming poverty (World Bank, 2007; United Nations, 2009). Social entrepreneurs try to fulfill these numerous unmet needs by linking their mission to creating and sustaining social value, not just private value (Dees, 1998:4). In comparison to non-entrepreneurial third sector organizations, social entrepreneurs apply innovative, proactive and risk-taking strategies (Helm and Andersson, 2010). The most prominent example is Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank idea for which he received the Nobel Peace prize in 2006. The mission of Grameen is to bring people out of poverty (Seelos and Mair, 2005). It fulfills its mission by granting microcredits to small entrepreneurs, and by doing so, has successfully gotten millions of people out of poverty (Haugh, 2007). Therefore, its founder upholds the claim that social entrepreneurs are the solution to meet the urgent needs of society (Yunus, 2009). Due to the potential of social entrepreneurship, dedicated foundations such as Ashoka, the Avina Foundation, the Schwab Foundation and the Skoll Foundation try to identify social entrepreneurs in order to support their activities and their development. One of the prime selection criteria for their support is to demonstrate social impact. All together these foundations invest more than $75m annually in selected social entrepreneurs (Ashoka, 2010; Avina Foundation, 2009; Schwab Foundation, 2002; Skoll Foundation, 2009). Most of these foundations have been set up by successful entrepreneurs, such as Jeff Skoll, who are likely to measure the return on investment of their philanthropic donations as accurately as the EBITDA of their companies. Encouraging social entrepreneurial initiatives has also been on our governments’ agenda for a while now, even in parts of the world where governmental actions against exclusion and poverty are more common (European Commission, 2003). Academic research has assisted practitioners in exploring the new phenomenon of social entrepreneurship and distilling its concepts and learning. A search on “social entrepreneurship” done in July 2010 resulted in more than 450 academic publications on the ProQuest and EBSCO databases. The focus of this research ranges from definitions of social entrepreneurship (see e.g. Martin and Osberg, 2007), to various in-depth case studies (e.g. Bornstein, 2007), or to the measurement and scaling of social impact (Kramer, 2005). At the same time, different societal actors ask entrepreneurs and corporations to manage businesses responsibly and to increase their social and environmental performance (Basu and Palazzo, 2008; Spitzeck, 2009; Zadek, 2004). The literature deals with similar challenges such as defining corporate responsibility (Garriga and Melé, 2004), generating empirical evidence by in-depth case studies (Spitzeck, 2009; Zadek, 2004), as well as measuring and improving corporate social or environmental performance (Delmas and Blass, 2010; Wood, 1991). The similarity of challenges raises the question of what mainstream entrepreneurs, managers and organizations can learn from social entrepreneurs. Austin (2006), for instance, claims that social entrepreneurship can have value for corporations and introduced the concept of corporate social entrepreneurship. This creates a further link between the findings of social entrepreneurship research and well-established research fields such as entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship
