RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

Social entrepreneurship and co-creation for sustainable business 235
neglected, or highly disadvantaged population that lacks the financial means to achieve the
transformative means on its own.
In fact, every entrepreneurship should be classified as responsible, regardless of whether
it is for-profit or non-for-profit. Therefore, it is expected that the notion of “responsible” should
contain elements of social and environmental in terms of business practices and policies. Yet,
what distinguishes social entrepreneurship per se form the traditional forms of responsible
entrepreneurship is the distinctive characteristics of the very essence and nature of products
and services offered and the fact that their inherently social cause is expected to be prevalent
in all major production approaches.
Martin and Osberg (2007) define social entrepreneurship as having the following three
components:
1. Identifying a stable but inherently unjust equilibrium that cause the exclusion, marginalization,
or suffering of a segment of humanity that lacks the financial means or political clout
to achieve any transformative benefit on its own;
2. Identify an opportunity in this unjust equilibrium, developing a social value proposition,
and bringing to bear inspiration, creativity, direct action, courage, and fortitude, thereby
challenging the sable state’s hegemony;
3. Forging a new, stable equilibrium that releases trapped potential or alleviates the suffering
of the targeted group, and through imitation and the creation of a stable ecosystem
around the new equilibrium ensuring a better future for the targeted group and even society
at large.
This distinguishes social entrepreneurship from social service provision and social activism.
The successful social entrepreneur takes direct action and generates a new equilibrium; the
social activist influences others to generate a new and sustained equilibrium; and the social
service provider takes direct action to improve the outcomes of the current equilibrium.
Co-creation – the new paradigm of sustainable business transformation
A specific trend in mass production is that individuals do not participate in the design of
a product or service, they are only presented with an offering designed for them by the respective
companies. However, with the wide spreading of information technologies and social
media, consumers have become more interested in engaging in product design or service delivery
and thus they are more demanding on the variety of sustainability aspects which these
products and/or services incorporate – social, environmental and economic. Hence, co-creation
is gradually turning into a must for businesses in their efforts to transform and appropriate
a more sustainable pattern, regardless of whether their profile is for-profit or
non-for-profit.
Businesses in today’s economy have to continuously reinvent themselves in order to adapt
to increasingly complex and dynamic market realities. Standardization makes it difficult for
companies to differentiate themselves from competitors. Markets are more fragmented than
they used to be; and consumers have unprecedented access to information and networks. Meanwhile,
technologies have created new modes of production and innovation that enable and
encourage greater degrees of participation and collaboration. It is doubtless that co-creation
cannot be safely ignored by companies who want to succeed in today’s marketplace (Rosier