Developing societies are facing challenges with basic needs of food and water, housing and energy. Increase in population is intensifying the challenges. The problems of sustainable development, distribution of energy and energy security are interlinked with each other and therefore a new idea or innovation is required to address the societal challenges. The social environment is rapidly changing with the want of sustainable economic development and stable democracies. Scientists and engineers play vital role in social innovation and helps in addressing the social needs and challenges of the people. Social innovation is the adoption, integration development and creation of new practices and concepts that creates a better world. The innovation gives most importance to people and planet. Social innovation involves steps that focus on people health, community development, education and working conditions. People residing in a society are the main components of society that leads to social development. Social innovation focusses more on the needs of people rather than profit of business. The process of innovation can take place within a government, profit as well as non-profit sector and within the spaces between them. It existed in the past in the form of fair trade, community-centered planning, plans for conserving habitats, investing as a part of social responsibility and supported employment.
Community engagement is necessary for social innovations. It is defined as the participation or involvement of people in specific activities that aims for creating a better world. As described earlier that people residing in a society are the major components that help in developing the society and bringing positive changes in it. A wide range body works to explore community engagement theory that revealed participation and practical experience are the stepping-stones of social success. Social innovation and community engagement are interconnected with each other. The two factors that determine community engagement are how broad and how deep the concept of social innovation is. If cause of social innovation is for the betterment of society active community engagement can be achieved. According to the theory of community engagement, to increase community involvement public should have the balanced and objective information that will help them in understanding the problems, opportunities and alternatives. Public feedback is significantly important for analyzing the solutions and taking correct decisions. Active involvement with the public is required to know their needs and aspirations. Collaborating with public in each aspects of decision that includes identifying the correct solution and alternatives for meeting the social challenges. Empowering public with final decision-making helps in winning their trust that indirectly influence the society.
Social entrepreneurship is an important contribution to social innovation. It is a non-profit sector and includes neither profit sector nor public organizations. It creates new social values through innovative approaches and introduces new ways of achieving goals. It brings new patterns and possibilities for innovation and believes in doing things that the organization thinks cannot be done. Social entrepreneurship is defined as the use of new start-ups and other entrepreneurs for funding, developing and implementing solutions to meet the social, cultural and environmental challenges. It broadens the goals of the society, culture and environment in areas of health care and community development. Social entrepreneurship became popular in late 2010’s. Internet was widely used for uplifting the social innovation, like social networking and social media sites. These platforms help the social entrepreneurs to communicate to large number of people who are geographically far away from each other to share ideas and focus on the same goals. People of various communities can discuss about their issues, events and activities via the platform along with raising funds through crowdfunding. Social innovations like social entrepreneurship and social enterprises are comparatively new to the world. Therefore, they are facing lots of challenges.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the basic needs of the people are food, clothing and shelter. Micro entrepreneurs help in transforming the way of food, shelter and society. They contribute to the society by educating the people, developing humans and teaching them about home cleanliness. They also cater to the health needs of the society. Small and micro entrepreneurs have proven themselves to satisfy the basic needs of the people as mentioned by Maslow. Researchers argue that entrepreneur catalyzes social changes and addresses social needs of people keeping behind their financial benefits as an entrepreneur. They train the minds of people in such a way that they become capable of tolerating risks. Social entrepreneurs change the way of thinking of people such that new ideas for innovation come in their mind, they become mentally strong and develop the capability of facing any type of challenges whether it be social, cultural or environmental challenges. It can be concluded that social entrepreneurs has a vital role to play in the upliftment of society and providing solutions to the social issues faced by the people residing in a society. They take care of the basic needs of people proposed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Social entrepreneurship is a completely new paradigm to the people. Therefore, it has to undergo certain challenges while it is being implemented in the society. The challenges faced by them are discussed below:
- Managing cash flow: Money is essential for developing any small or medium sized business yet the entrepreneurs strive to pay the bills. They do not give priority to profits however, minimum amount of money is required for their survival and carrying out their operation.
- Employee hiring: When the social entrepreneurs become popular it becomes difficult to manage all the operations alone. Therefore, they hire employees to assist them in their work. However, most of the people are not interested in this field and therefore, the entrepreneurs face challenges while implementing the concept in the society.
- Time Management: It is another major challenge faced by the entrepreneurs who has gained popularity. Therefore, the solution to this challenge is making smart use of time by distributing tasks among the assistants.
- While implementing entrepreneurship in the society, entrepreneurs faces challenge in delegating tasks as everything is messed up. The solution to this problem is proper time management.
- Identifying the social needs of the people is yet another challenge that the social entrepreneurs faces. Right needs and challenges should be identified in order to address them correctly. This requires in depth research of the society.
- The other challenges faced by the social entrepreneurs are raising funds to expand service across the people in the world, self-doubt and lacking confidence in one self.