Social Entrepreneurship: Action Grounded in Needs, Opportunities and/or Perceived Necessities?

The interest in social and/or societal entrepreneurship has increased rapidly during the past decade. Yet, the field is still young and fragmented and its heritage includes tensions and shortcomings. The theories grounded in entrepreneurship research tend to address the entrepreneurial ventures’ ability to recognise, explore and/or exploit opportunities . Other research argues instead that social entrepreneurial ventures respond to needs in society. However, none of these lines of research extensively problematise the issues of opportunities and needs. Furthermore, the discussion in this paper is related to a third concept, perceived necessities , as a suggestion to nuance our understanding of social entrepreneurship. The analysis in this paper is based on four social entrepreneurship cases.