ABSTRACT
Social opportunities are also like business opportunities in that they must be financially sustainable for the enterprise that pursues them. This chapter focuses on generating ideas for a social venture and assessing those ideas for their potential to be true opportunities. It explores the role of innovation in social entrepreneurship and presents several tools for assessing social opportunities. The chapter discusses social ideas and where they come from. It explores the process of assessing an idea to determine whether or not it represents a genuine opportunity. The chapter introduces the concept of innovation and the role it plays in opportunity recognition and implementation. It also discusses typical forms of resistance to innovation and how those might be addressed and overcome. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the social value proposition and the mission of the social venture that pursues the identified opportunity.
