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These changes bring new things, such as:

• new services,

• new quality of services,

• new methods of production,

• new factors of production,

• new forms of organization, and

• new markets (Defourny & Nyssens, 2012).

This direction is based on the broader vision of entrepreneurship linked to William Drayton, who
founded the Ashoka non-profit organization in 1980. This non-profit focuses on so-called “public
entrepreneurs”, who are able to create social innovations in various areas. An ecosystem for the

agents of socially-beneficial changes is thus created (Defourny & Nyssens, 2012; Ashoka, 2020).
The first pioneers in the field of developing social entrepreneurship include the Harvard Business
School, which launched the Social Enterprise Initiative in 1993 (Defourny & Nyssens, 2012).

The European School

The idea of social entrepreneurship began to be elaborated in Western Europe in the 1980s,
creating a closer connection between it and social economics while emphasizing a clear social

goal and benefit to people, groups or society (Dohnalová et al., 2016).
Italy can be seen as a country in which the fundamental building blocks of social entrepreneurship
in Europe were laid. As early as the 1980s, initiatives in the form of cooperatives were created
there as a reaction to unfulfilled needs in the field of work integration and other services (Defourny
& Nyssens, 2012). The concept of social entrepreneurship first appeared in Impresa sociale

magazine in 1990. In 1991, the Italian parliament adopted Law no. 381/1991 on social
cooperation, which gave social cooperatives a new legal status (České sociální podnikání, 2013).
This legal status was highly adaptable for pioneers in the field of social entrepreneurship.

From 1996 to 1999, research on the “Emergence of Social Enterprises in Europe” (“L’EMergence
de l’Entreprise Sociale en Europe” in French), known primarily under the abbreviation EMES, was
carried out. This was originally a network of researchers who were part of the research program
financed by the European Commission. Later, this name came to be used for the international
network. EMES was legally established in 2002. The goal of this expert organization is to create
a European database on social economics (Dohnalová et al., 2016).

Other prominent research networks include CIRIEC, which was founded in 1947 by professor
Edgard Milhaud. This international network focuses on research into public, social and
cooperative economics (CIRIEC, 2020).

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