Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship in the Wake of COVID-19: A Perspective From the Developing Side of the World

Introduction

Companies always found difficult to accomplish their social responsibilities due to the contradiction between approach used to optimize business and social mission. Hence companies are oftenly found to be struggling towards attainment of agenda for social responsibility. However, the established & well-known firms try to follow philosophy of Triple Bottom Line for creating social value & social impact without compromising on profitability or sustainability. Similar has been mentioned through literature that in order to generate sustainable value, companies need to formulate strategies and practices that may not only resulted in the increase of shareholders value but will also contributed progressively to sustainable world (Tunio et al., 2021; Shaikh et al., 2021; Afshan et al., 2021). Thus strive for social value resulted in social entrepreneurship and to do this there is a need of out of the box innovation in products, services & organizations etc. Hence it is legitimate to declare that most unexplored area is social innovation. In fact, to deliver increase value from the corporate social responsibilities (CSR) organizations must try to learn how they must incorporate social innovations in their CSR. Therefore, social entrepreneurship came into the limelight, especially after the dawn of 20^th century the term. However, the traces of social entrepreneurship might be found even before 100 years that is reflected through voluntary working by public and private organizations as well as by structuring and working of different communities (Phillips et al., 2015).

Zahra et al (2009) narrated social entrepreneurship as the hybrid of activities and process to focus more vividly on opportunities for new association or to optimize business of existing firms. The definition has major connection with the prospective association of social innovation with social entrepreneurship as Phills et al (2008) declared social innovation and social entrepreneurship are interrelated. In fact both the terms are about identification of social problems and its solution through capitalizing upon opportunity to overcome social need.

Common Examples Of Social Entrepreneurship From Developing Sides Of The World

Some of the most common examples of the social entrepreneurship that are conducted to benefit society and to leverage economies of developing sides of the world are as under:

Solar Skylights developed from plastic bottles containing simply water and bleach was one of the most creative social innovations which ultimately resulted in social entrepreneurship. The light generated from skylight was equivalent to 55 W bulbs and is sufficient to make one work effectively for longer working hours. Coupled with the fact that use of Skylight is also beneficial for decrease of electricity consumption and according to the estimate the use of skylight resulted in saving of $ US 10/ month (Sivathanu & Bhise, 2013; Tunio et al., 2021; Gilal et al., 2021; Abdullah et al., 2020; Tunio, 2020).