Social Entrepreneurs

An entrepreneur is defined as any person who builds capital through risk or initiative. While this blanket definition encompasses a wide variety of initiatives and initiative takers, the term is generally used to imply a person or group of persons who start a venture or enterprise with the express aim of raising capital and accepts full responsibility for the outcome. By this definition, entrepreneurs are integral to wealth creation, as the firms they set up offer new opportunities for employment, creation of shared value and diffusion of wealth. However, there is still more that entrepreneurship can achieve, as evidenced below.

There are several types of entrepreneurs, with lifestyle entrepreneurs being one particularly interesting kind. Lifestyle entrepreneurs place passion over profit, and choose entrepreneurship over corporate employment because it allows them to pursue some particular field, which they may have passion for or expertise in, or allows them to pursue a lifestyle that they might otherwise have had to forego. Social entrepreneurs can be considered as a special type of lifestyle entrepreneurs, except that in this case, it is not leading a particular kind of life that is the appeal, but the desire to make an impact and help solve some of the bigger issues that society faces. A social entrepreneur is generally an ambition person, who is not content with accepting the world as it is, but wants to devise creative solutions within the private sector framework, for problems that on the face of it, should be addressed by the government. While the primary aim of his or her business might still be profit creation, there will also be a clause in the mission statement of the company emphasizing the social nature of the enterprise, and the vision of the company will be to achieve both simultaneously.