Theme
Social Entrepreneurship

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"Social impact accelerators (SIAs) seek to select startups with the potential to generate financial returns and social impact. Through the lenses of signaling theory and gender role congruity theory, we examine 2324 social startups that applied to 123 SIAs globally in 2016 and 2017 and find that SIAs are more likely to accept startups that signal their economic and social credibility. Moreover, while we find that the influence of these signals is strongest when they are congruent with the stereotypes associated with the lead founder's gender, men seem to experience better outcomes from gender incongruity than women."

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"The purpose of this spot survey is to identify the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the current generation of Indian social entrepreneurs as seen by those who spend the most time evaluating them-impact investors. By drawing on the opinions of these investors, it is possible to identify the areas in which critical skills and competencies are stronger than expected or are chronically absent, and how to start a substantive conversation on improving the ecosystem for early-stage social businesses. Unlike other reports in the impact investment space, this report looks at both successful deals that got done and deals that fell through. The insights are designed to assist incubators and accelerators in designing curricula for their investees, and to allow impact investors to develop more effective strategies for addressing pipeline challenges."

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"Solar Sister, a social enterprise operating in Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria, is dedicated to eradicating energy poverty through the economic empowerment of women. In addition to economically empowering its women entrepreneurs, the business model of Solar Sister also cultivates sales networks built on trust in last-mile distribution methods. While Solar Sister has previously conducted research regarding its many entrepreneurs, it has lacked information on its end customers. In 2016 a research team from Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship undertook survey research with Solar Sister to examine the effects of solar lantern use on users’ health, education, time allocation, household savings, income generation, and increased agency. The research team conducted a 53-question survey in more than 20 villages across five regions in Tanzania, with research assistants providing English-Swahili translation. The data and stories presented here are intended to help illuminate the potential of solar lanterns to improve livelihoods in rural Tanzania and beyond."

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"This study provides an insight into social enterprise in Malaysia, including an estimate of the scale and scope of the sector. It assesses existing policies that are relevant to social enterprise and analyses how these have been implemented. This study is based on quantitative information obtained from a total of 132 survey respondents across Malaysia."

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"This first of a kind report provides detailed cluster analysis of 398 impact enterprises across the three levers in five East African countries. The report is written and presented to be useful to all development sector stakeholders, with specific insights to inform decisions of investors, enterprises, and non-financial support providers across East Africa."

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"A study from Zeppelin University and Siemens Stiftung provides for the first time data that evaluates the ability of social enterprises to satisfy the basic needs of poor populations. Focusing on Colombia, Mexico, Kenya and South Africa, the dynamics in the public, private, and third sectors were examined, and to what extent these influence the activities of social enterprises. The study includes concrete recommendations on how to increase the contribution of social enterprises to poverty alleviation."

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"This study highlights the importance of strengthening social entrepreneurship to support both economic growth and individual prosperity in Indonesia. The mission of social entrepreneurship is to make solicing social issues a part of business. By involving the private sector in solving social and economic issues, social entrepreneurship has great potential to improve Indonesians' livelihoods in a lasting way."

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"How do established companies respond to the entry of hybrid social ventures in their industries? Hybrid social ventures-new companies that combine business and social missions-use sustainability-oriented strategies to compete with established companies for some of their most desirable customers and employees. Yet hybrid social ventures also benefit when established companies advance their own sustainability strategies. This unusual competitive dynamic creates opportunities for collaboration. This article presents a framework for established companies responding to hybrid social ventures based on analysis of eight established consumer-facing companies. Our findings suggest that the responses of established companies differ based on opportunities they perceive for sustainability-oriented value creation with their own customers and employees."

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"This collaboration between Yunus Social Business and Boston Consulting Group looks at how Venture Philanthropists (VPs) have a unique opportunity to shape the future of social business. The report outlines a methodology to help VPs maximize the social impact of their investments at two levels. First, to understand and optimize the fund's impact on the social business to build stronger and more resilient companies, and second, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how the social businesses can optimize services and products to deliver better outcomes for beneficiaries."

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"The mobilization of social resources for addressing urgent societal needs under market assumptions is a major component of the strategy for development. Social enterprises as an alternative source of public goods and services attract the attention of academics, practitioners and policy-makers to the efficient use of entrepreneurial resources. Initially this study aims to provide a more systematic understanding about the factors that affect the probabilities of success of socially oriented undertakings and contributes to the literature by answering the call for more empirical research about such effects over their performance. Using a logistic regression model on data from a sample of socially oriented ventures in 148 countries participating in the 2013-2016 Entrepreneurship Database Program at Emory University, the positive effects of such factors were first validated. At a later stage, this quest attempted to find differential behaviors of these effects by comparing operations in OECD and developing countries. No conclusive evidence for dissimilarities between groups was found. This result could be partially attributed to the accelerator´s selection processes favoring companies with a proven record. Important global policy implications are drawn in support of harmonized social-entrepreneurship promotion programs and the adoption of standardized impact measurement criteria. This argument raises ample academic and practical possibilities for investigating the impact of socio-economic and cultural influences on the efficacy of social enterprise´s interventions. After controlling for the efficient use of entrepreneurial resources, teams made-up of civil society organizations, businesses and government institutions can allocate their attention to those country-specific situations affecting the efficacy of development programs such as the problems to be solved, the particularity of the eco-systems and the adequacy of the organizational arrays adopted."

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