Social Entrepreneurship Questioning the Status Quo: Waste as a Resource

Abstract

There has been an increasing interest in social entrepreneurs' roles in creating social value, fostering economic development, and advancing environmental sustainability. In institutional economics, there is extensive support for entrepreneurship as having a positive impact on economic development and personal wellbeing. This paper challenges the accepted understanding of social entrepreneurs as being "heroic," and their process of starting a new venture as beginning with passion or with the recognition of a social problem. Through examining the case of Clean the World, a social enterprise, we demonstrate that not all social ventures start with the intention of creating social value, but with the question: How can I make a profit? We discuss a recently proposed paradigm called effectual entrepreneurship, and then we illustrate how this paradigm fits the path of Clean the World. Effectual entrepreneurs have questioned the status quo and have focused on the existing or available resources, rather than on identifying opportunities first. We then explore how Clean the World fell into social entrepreneurship by "accident," while considering waste a resource. We conclude by making some suggestions about how to facilitate more of these "accidents" by fostering a culture that questions the status quo.