Social entrepreneurship - a trend or a real shift ?

We can describe a social entrepreneur as someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas business entrepreneurs typically measure performance in profit and return, social entrepreneurs assess their success in terms of the impact they have on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.

One well known contemporary social entrepreneur is Muhammad Yunus, founder and manager of Grameen Bank and its growing family of social venture businesses, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

To give an example, Danone SA joined the Grameen group and created the Grameen Danone Food, which is a plan of development in Bangladesh, using local farmers and local companies as suppliers.
http://www.danone.com/fr/actualites/focus/grameen-danone-food.html


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_18/b3881047_mz007.htm?chan=search


Nowadays, our society is in constant evolution. People are more aware about their rights and give more importance to their health and well-being.
Entrepreneur must understand that even if profits are of course important, the well-being of their employees is primordial cause it is thank to them that a company can make those profits.
I think that it is more than a trend but a real need for our society.

That is also why the impacts on the environment are always mentioned for each strategy of a company. Companies are many to become "environmentally-friendly", first of all, for their image but also because they understand that our future depends on that.

Entrepreneurs have to overtake the research of profit and only profit. The example of Danone shows that a multinational can think socially and still generate profits.

In my opinion, social entrepreneurship has become a real shift and we are all beginning to understand that we really have to play a role in the society.