What is "social entrepreneurship"

n. The application of the principles of business entrepreneurship—including risk-taking and ingenuity—to social causes.

Social entrepreneurship is the attempt to draw upon business techniques and private sector approaches to find solutions to social, cultural, or environmental problems. This concept may be applied to a variety of organizations with different sizes, aims, and beliefs. Conventional entrepreneurs typically measure performance in profit, revenues and increases in stock prices, but social entrepreneurs also take into account a positive "return to society". Social entrepreneurship typically attempts to further broad social, cultural, and environmental goals often associated with the voluntary sector. At times, profit also may be a consideration for social enterprises, but not as an end in itself, but rather as a means to further the social or cultural goals of the organization. In the 2010s, social entrepreneurship is facilitated by the use of the Internet, which helps people who are not geographically close yet who share the same goals to collaborate to achieve social goals and facilitates the dissemination of information.