Why Business Modelling is Important for Social Entrepreneurship?

7/16/2018

In Europe the interest about social entrepreneurship is strongly driven by the growing recognition of the role social enterprises can play in fostering social inclusion and inclusive growth. How to design, start, manage and lead businesses that benefit people and the society in a financially sustainable way. This question makes the business modelling in social entrepreneurship one of the key topics for people that help, support and facilitate the social entrepreneurs.

Social Business Model

Business modelling in social entrepreneurship is a process of creating or building up a social business model (SBM), or in other words, of designing a descriptive, holistic, relevant and simplified version of a case of the already started or in the stage of a start-up social business.

In the meantime, the professionals who help and train social entrepreneurs have to know how to create business models. Why?

Social Impact + Sustainable Business Model

We realized that managing a social business is not about just adding business skills to the realm of social impact! Balancing a social mission with an intention to trade and manage a business requires a blending of skills which is greater than the sum of each set of skills alone. The social impact inside a business operation is not cost neutral - so both the skills needed to deliver on a social impact and the costs involved in doing so need to be considered in designing a viable and sustainable business model.

These findings were made during the work on the “Boost Aid for Social Entrepreneurship through Training” project, funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission under KA2 - Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices, KA204 - Strategic Partnerships for adult education. The project was motivated by the fact that in Europe the interest about social entrepreneurship is growing and many young people recognize themselves as social entrepreneurs. On the other hand, teachers, trainers and mentors on the classical entrepreneurship discipline have growing number of business cases, that are directly related to the social entrepreneurship.

So, we had to pay attention to the methodological tools of those professionals who have to support and train the people who create from scratch or develop already existing social enterprises.

If you are interested to read more about the article:
BUSINESS MODELLING IN SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Author
Coordinator @BASET
KISMC

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