Abstract for:Deconstructing Social Entrepreneurship: Exploring Impact and Efficiency Across Strategies

By definition, a social enterprise is a business that attempts to succeed under the terms of a double bottom line business model in which impact and profit are considered equally important as measures of success. An NGO’s effectiveness, on the other hand—considered independently of its ability to achieve scale—might be measured as a function of the amount it spends on overhead and the amount that goes directly to impact-related projects and programs that further a purely philanthropic cause. By modeling the dynamics of a social entrepreneurial venture, we might be better able to assess and compare its overall impact, efficiency, and sustainability to that of an NGO. Here, we develop a simple model-based gaming environment, which enables exploration of different management strategies for social enterprises.