ABSTRACT
Sustainable entrepreneurship has attracted a growing attention in both scholarly and practitioner domains. It focuses on generating social, environmental and business value, which also is termed as shared value. There are several terms and definitions that encompass its attributes and dimensions. Shepherd and Patzelt (2011) have been expanding the remit of social entrepreneurship into ‘sustainable’ entrepreneurship, as a new interdisciplinary field, which ‘explore(s) the role of entrepreneurial action as a mechanism for sustaining nature and ecosystems whilst providing economic and non-economic gains for investors, entrepreneurs and societies’ (p. 138). Sustainability and sustainable development are imperative for the future of economies and societies. They are not only about the longer-term well-being of the environments and organizations but also about humanity. Sustainable development meets at the juncture of three constituent parts – environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and socio-political sustainability (Bell and Stellingwerf, 2012). These form the foundations of an emerging relatively new field of entrepreneurship – sustainable entrepreneurship. This entails a holistic approach to venture development taking into account multiple bottom lines, i.e. environmental, economic and social sustainability dimensions. The notion of sustainable entrepreneurship has been raised more recently to address the contribution of entrepreneurial activities to sustainable economic and social development, which entails substantial sustainability innovations (Schaltegger and Wagner, 2011). Drawing on this positioning, this edited volume has gathered the state-ofthe-art in terms of conceptual frameworks of analysis, empirical insights and related policy discussions pertaining to sustainable entrepreneurship and social innovation. Taking on board this composite perspective, the book highlights elements of sustainable entrepreneurship, which, additionally, have a societal impact as well as regional relevance. Related aspects of innovation are also presented, and definitional issues are further elucidated, so as to scope the relevant inter-connected fields of study, mainly sustainable entrepreneurship and social innovation. In order to meet the future challenges of sustainability, organizations need to undertake transformational instead of incremental change. Transformational
change towards sustainability involves fundamental change in cultural values and collective consciousness of a society that enables sustainability-driven values to flourish and embed (Ehrenfeld and Hoffman, 2013; Schaefer et al., 2015). Entrepreneurship and social innovation are processes that can contribute to this transformation. Social and environmental value creation that foster sustainability can be achieved through sustainable entrepreneurship and social innovation.
