ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the emergence and consolidation of the global social enterprise movement since it gained momentum in the early 2000s. Its ethos was inspired by as diverse influences as the anti-authoritarian counterculture movement, free marketeers and the Silicon Valley open-source community. Influential academics and pioneer social entrepreneurs were the first to use the term social entrepreneurship. Established NGOs and socially responsible businesses made use of the new tools and thinking and added momentum to what had become a movement. Conferences, workshops, and education programmes served to consolidate and spread knowledge and skills across the globe. Experiments with new financial and regulatory instruments have gradually brought forth national and global institutional infrastructures and are turning the movement into an industry.
