Enabling the flourishing and evolution of social entrepreneurship for innovative and inclusive societies

The project has four main objectives: To provide advices to stakeholders on how to foster Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation; to draft an Evolutionary Theory of Social Entrepreneurship to explain the different evolutionary paths of Social Entrepreneurship in Europe and how Social Entrepreneurship and institutions co-evolved during time; to identify the features of an enabling eco-system for Social Entrepreneurship; to identify the New Generation of Social Entrepreneurs, its features, needs and constraints as well as their contribution to Social Innovation.

In pursuing these four main objectives other objectives will be reached: increasing the understating of their functioning of Social Enterprises, increase the visibility of the local, domestic and international role of Social Entrepreneurship, understand which are the main problems in accessing resources for Social Entrepreneurs, understand the degree of inappropriateness of the legal environments in relation with the daily operation of the Social Enterprise

This project sought to map social enterprise sectors across 11 European countries to better understand the local conditions and the enablers and barriers of success for these social businesses. The project was led by a consortium of universities and social enterprise support organisations and was funded through the European Commission's FP& Framework.