ABSTRACT
Sustainable entrepreneurship refers to entrepreneurial activities that enable sustainable development (Shepherd and Patzelt 2011). Sustainable entrepreneurs are considered as the catalysts for systemic change (Parrish and Foxon 2006). Moreover, they introduce future services because they work for a sustainable world that does not yet exist (Shepherd and Patzelt 2011). In existing research, sustainability entrepreneurship has been introduced as a solution to market imperfections (Cohen and Winn 2007) and a means to realise sustainability innovation to the mass market (Schaltegger and Wagner 2011). The SE literature is characterised by the urgent need to take seriously the limited carrying capacity of our planet (Dean and McMullen 2007; Shepherd and Patzelt 2011). This casts a systemic perspective on SE, which is reinforced by various typologies of entrepreneurs (Schaltegger and Wagner 2011). Yet we know little of the process of SE (Poldner et al. 2015). The notion of social innovation brings the focus on solutions to the contemporary problems with models explaining the different stages of social innovation (see for example Murray et al. 2010). Social innovation results are described as ‘new ideas that meet unmet needs’ in any sector (Mulgan 2007, 4). Social innovation may concern either the process, for instance individual creativity or organisational structure, or the outcome, for instance new products, features or methods (Phills et al. 2008). Regardless of the stance, entrepreneurs can be understood as agents of social innovation (Dees and Anderson 2006). Yet, there exists uncertainty as to how to define social innovation (DeBruin et al. 2014).
