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Preface
- Brookings Institution Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Research on social entrepreneurship is finally catching up to its potential for supporting socially entrepreneurial activity in society as a whole. Drawn by increasing financial support and public interest, researchers are laying the foundation for a distinctive field of inquiry. The increased research activity can be seen in a number of indicators, including the number of recent articles cited in the references at the end of this book. Many schools of business and public affairs have launched new training programs for nascent social entrepreneurs, which in turn have created demand for teaching cases and curriculum and which in turn again have created demand for rigorous research. This demand curve is already producing results. Major journals have started to feature occasional articles and special issues on social entrepreneurship , the Stanford Social Innovation Review remains a faithful outlet for applied research, and three new volumes of research studies and cases have been released in the past year, one edited by Alex Nicholls of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School; a second by Jane WeiSkillern , James E. Austin, Herman Leonard, and Howard Stevenson of the Harvard Business School; and a third by Johanna Mair, Jeffrey Robinson, and Kai Hockerts of the IESE Business School at the University of Navarra. The demand curve is also creating long needed dialogue about research opportunities and assumptions, some at star-studded conferences, some vii PREFACE 00 5211-0 fm 7/13/08 6:52 PM Page vii on interactive Internet platforms, and some in more intimate venues as researchers and entrepreneurs meet one on one. The curve is also driving the expansion of traditional research outlets, for example, the Social Science Research Network, which is now organizing and searching the growing inventory of social entrepreneurship research using a new taxonomy designed by Susan Davis of Ashoka. This momentum is creating a fertile environment for attracting faculty to the study of social entrepreneurship, which Johanna Mair and Ignasi Martí described in 2006 as a “source of explanation, prediction, and delight.” As the infrastructure of social entrepreneurship grows, so does the demand for applied research. It is a magnetic effect that often shapes a field of research—if you pick a compelling question and provide reasonable support, the researchers will come. There are other reasons for the recent spike in research, not the least of which is the remarkable publicity surrounding Muhammad Yunus, who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Grameen Bank, one of the most studied and admired socially entrepreneurial efforts in the world. The spike is also driven by the exponential growth in the number of cases for study and the basic excitement surrounding the notion that intractable problems such as poverty, hunger, and disease can actually be solved. “On the most basic level,” Roger Martin and Sally Osberg wrote in 2007, “there’s something inherently interesting and appealing about entrepreneurs and the stories of why and how they do what they do.” Yet, as Martin and Osberg continue, “interest in social entrepreneurship transcends the phenomenon of popularity and fascination with people . Social entrepreneurship signals the imperative to drive social change, and it is that potential payoff, with its lasting, transformative benefit to society, that sets the field and its practitioners apart.” The same might be said for researchers who study social benefit organizations, the term I use in this book as a substitute for nonprofits out of respect for Bill Drayton ’s plea that researchers stop using “non” terms in the field. As he wrote in 2007, “You cannot describe half of the world’s operations by what they are not.”1 The rest of this book will explore the recent spike in more detail, starting with what I believe to be a healthy debate about the definition of social entrepreneurship and ending with a discussion of a research project viii PREFACE 1. Drayton (2007, p. 5) 00 5211-0 fm 7/13/08 6:52 PM Page viii [54.196.106.106] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:34 GMT) designed to compare the characteristics of high-performing social benefit organizations engaged in socially innovative activity with their less socially innovative high-performing peers. Drawing upon lessons learned from the literatures on business and social entrepreneurship as well as a survey of 131 highly, moderately, and not-too entrepreneurial social benefit organizations, this book is divided into seven chapters. (I use the term not-too entrepreneurial throughout this book out of respect for the high-performing organizations that focus...