General Profiling and Benchmarking of Social Entrepreneurs

11/27/2017

During the BASET project development the partners involved in the project had to answer one important question: how can an Educator (trainer, mentor or coach) identify social entrepreneurs before they start working with him/her to help start-up or develop the social enterprise? The answer was a milestone for the further model development and a basis for creating a questionnaire-based test for social entrepreneurs.

So, whilst working on the project the project team realized that the first step for an educator is to understand profoundly the profile (basic characteristics) of the social entrepreneur and then to do benchmark of the target social entrepreneur(s) with this profile.

The profile of social entrepreneurs responds to a wide concept, where no special characteristics prevail over others. Social entrepreneurs depend neither on gender, nor on age. The social entrepreneur is an “attitude” and a "set of personal values" that push one person to drive an entrepreneurial process with social impact. Thus, a social entrepreneur is a person (man or woman), aged between 18 and 64, with a high level of formal education that promote a social business with both social and economic impact (profit).

Read more about the project:
BASET Project Kick Off in Sofia, Bulgaria [Social Entrepreneurship]

Profile of a Social Entrepreneur

The definition of the term “social entrepreneurship” starts with the word “entrepreneurship.” Social entrepreneur is a man/woman who finds innovative solutions to society’s social problems. Social entrepreneur often has a personal experience of the need he/she is addressing and as such he/she is uniquely positioned to address some of our most pressing social challenges. Social entrepreneur is usually passionate, driven and committed.

More interesting articles:
What Inspires Social Entrepreneurs?

The border between classic and social entrepreneurship is not always very clear: classic entrepreneurs may also produce social value in the process of generating shareholder wealth, while social entrepreneurs may produce private gains in their mission to create social value. What differentiates social entrepreneurs from classic entrepreneurs are not necessarily specific abilities, such as confidence or persistence, but their determination to succeed in achieving a long-term social goal they strongly believe in. However, it is considered that all type of enterprises (commercial and social) should have a socially responsible activity, this meaning to assure organizational success by integrating several social aspects in the firm’s activity, in order to properly manage the impact of the firm’s activity to the environment and solve the community’s problems.

Entrepreneur vs Social Entrepreneur

Usually, the difference between traditional (classic) and social entrepreneur are as follows:

Traditional entrepreneur is a person who stimulates economic progress by identifying new and better ways of doing things and is responsible for the identification, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities that generate private wealth for the owner or shareholders. The wealth creation itself is the main way of measuring the success of the activity of one classic entrepreneur. He/she is passionate about his/her products or services, but this passion refers to the ability to make money by satisfying customers. Classic entrepreneurs may exploit the weak by looking to obtain profit at any cost and producing money for themselves.

Social entrepreneur is something more in comparison with the classic one since he/she is with a social mission and goes a step further by tackling the opportunities that result in social value. It is possible even to consider that social entrepreneurship is developing due to the problems created by successes of classic entrepreneurship. The social entrepreneur does not look to create vast personal wealth or a large corporation, rather, he/she is passionate about the social problem that is intended to be solved, and his/her main objective is creating sustainable social change, this drive being often founded on personal experience of injustice, inhumanity or inequality. Social entrepreneurs strengthen the weak, work to implement sustainable change and to make money for others. Compared to classic entrepreneurship, social one develops on a more talent-intensive basis.

It's About the Social Mission

Successful social entrepreneurs have as main objective to involve every individual in an activity correctly related to his abilities, in order to bring significant change. For social entrepreneurs, intrinsic motivation, generated from the satisfaction of bringing added-value for the community they live in, from having brought a positive change in the society, is fundamental.

They tend to make a team that shares their values, passions and social mission. Regardless of the social mission, creativity, perseverance and passion, a social entrepreneur has to have good knowledge regarding his field of activity, but also classic business competencies, also associated to business entrepreneurs: initiative, marketing and sales, finance, human resources management. Moreover, social entrepreneurs tend to be open to accessing external financial resources and consider the opening of the community market as an opportunity to develop their organization.

Social Impact

Social entrepreneurs’ organizations are generally involved in not one, but a variety of activities, connected or part of an integrated value chain, bringing a significant social impact through the creation of jobs, promotion and valorisation of local assets such as heritage or natural environment, raising awareness on development opportunities, and improving education.

Finding innovative new solutions to the world’s biggest problems is quietly becoming the most powerful business model of the 21st century. Social entrepreneurs often go where non-profits and government organisations can’t go due to lack of funds, organisation and innovation. Tackling global issues like poverty, malnutrition, clean air and water, and health care is a great incentive to formulating an exciting new business strategy for changing the world, i.e. social entrepreneurship. Achieving social impact involves close interaction with the local community including both the local population and other agents such as local producers, small firms or schools.

More interesting articles:

Business Model Canvas for Social Entrepreneurs
Business Modelling in Social Entrepreneurship
Why Business Modelling is Important for Social Entrepreneurship?

However, both types of entrepreneurs are important for the economy and none of them should be considered superior to the other, although social entrepreneurship tends to be more challenging, as this type of entrepreneurship cannot be founded on already formed business models. After a long period of time when classic entrepreneurs have been in the attention of the media, financial institutions and academic researchers, social entrepreneurs are beginning to receive more and more attention from all fields, as organizations in this sector continue to grow and develop.

Nowadays, however, the two types of entrepreneurs tend to cooperate, as social entrepreneurs recognize the competencies that business entrepreneurs have in terms of management and finance, and business entrepreneurs recognize the innovativeness and importance of social enterprises (Bornstein and Davis, 2010).

Author
Coordinator @BASET
KISMC

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