Social Entrepreneurship and Its Competences: Implications for Higher Education

Entrepreneurship needs a vision and leadership skills to accomplish it and a motivation to build something new, which will develop and sustain it. And society needs social entrepreneurs, contributing to a new organization of the welfare system, while making a difference and helping each other. The central theme in the existing social entrepreneurship literature is the pursuit of a social mission or objective. Thus, social entrepreneurs play a role as reformers and revolutionaries, who are intending to solve social problems, and not being answered by governmental policies. Entrepreneurial thinking and acting as well as innovation driving managers is a need for society. However, it is not the organization but the people, united by a proactive and market-driven culture, that are innovative and which combine to populate and to equip the organization with the required competencies. The chapter proposes a methodology to analyze the competencies that should be fostered by higher education programs to provide graduates with the desired competencies for entrepreneurship and driving innovation.