Building a Successful Social Venture: A Guide for Social Entrepreneurs

This is the first social enterprise book to combine theory with current cases from around the world to illustrate concepts and provide critical insights into what works, filling a huge gap in the literature.

This book serves as a blueprint for those who wish to build, sustain, and grow social ventures. It offers practical insights into the conceptual foundations of social entrepreneurship and provides an innovative framework for students, social entrepreneurs, and field researchers who wish to learn more about the application of business principles and theories of change for advancing social progress and creating a more just world.

Dr. Eric Carlson and Dr. James Koch have decades of experience building companies, creating centers of excellence, leading complex change efforts, and educating students. For more than a decade they played pivotal leadership roles in building the unique network of expertise and resources needed to create the most successful university-based social enterprise accelerator in the world - Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship's Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI) at Santa Clara University.

Building a Successful Social Venture integrates leaning from the experience of hundreds of social enterprises that have participated in GSBI accelerator programs to formalize knowledge about what works. It provides rich case studies from social ventures to illustrate practice-based theories that combine the acumen of Silicon Valley executives with the intimate on-the-ground insights of social entrepreneurs working globally to eradicate poverty.