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What would you get if you combined an entrepreneur, a technologist, a financier, and a strategist/ecologist with an international chef, corporate lawyer, architect, and more? One such international leadership team created a new model of eco-development (economic and ecological) and introduced it with an array of on-the-ground programs into a village on the edge of one of India's original nine Project Tiger nature reserves. This book presents the story of this remarkable center. It argues that to save an endangered species, you have to save its environment, and to save those, you must "save" the people that live with them, by providing eco-sensitive ways to grow economically, without encroaching on the natural environment or helping poachers. This "Golden Triangle" model is put forth in this book that includes eco-development facts and figures, engaging "how-it-happened" vignettes, insights and lessons learned, and results - including a four-times increase in tiger numbers, generation of new base-of-pyramid businesses, fierce eco-protectiveness by local people, eager adoption of eco-technologies, and economic and social betterment. Scalable implications are provided for economic and ecological development worldwide.

Sustainable development --- Business, ESG, Sustainability, Innovation, Social Enterprise.

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The fields of Social Entrepreneurship and Venture Philanthropy have been increasingly discussed in the scientific literature. The former concerns organisations at the crossroad between business and social worlds, which want to produce social or environmental impacts. The latter uses techniques borrowed from the fields of business and finance and applies them to philanthropy in order to support more efficiently socially-oriented innovative organisations. Both are developing relatively new disconcerting practices. However, their interaction raises a number of questionings and, as far as we know, very few academics have already studied the matter. Therefore, we aim to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon through this Master Thesis and, especially, to investigate the ideal-type Social Enterprises’ characteristics being championed in the Venture Philanthropy sector. To do so, this work first reviews transversally, according to the Social Enterprises’ schools of thought, the available academic literature on Venture Philanthropy, analyses a specific case-study in depth, and compares their different Social Enterprise’s visions. From a theoretical perspective, we affirm that every paper conveys a “hybrid” ideal-type, which matches features from multiple schools. From the practice perspective, our results show that the vision is also hybrid and that it does not entirely match the theoretical ones. Additionally, our Thesis provides encouraging results, such as new ideal-type features, which allows us to believe that further research regarding other cases would generate more characteristics, and progressively shape more accurately the ideal Social Enterprises’ visions promoted in Venture Philanthropy.

Venture Philanthropy --- Social Enterprise --- Philanthropy --- Impact Investing --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Economie sociale

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In the last few years, design thinking has emerged as an effective method of innovation in business management. It is a creative human-centered, experimental and interdisciplinary approach, which gives managers the opportunity to generate radical new ideas adapted to their users’ needs. More recently, this method has been adopted in other fields, such as the public, the healthcare and the third sectors. The diffusion of this method is now reaching also social enterprises, i.e. organisations that combine economic activity and social purposes to create valuable social impact for communities. Indeed, design thinking could be a promising approach to improve their long-term sustainability through innovation.
The purpose of this thesis is to explore the potential of design thinking for social enterprises from the perspective of social entrepreneurs. Its guiding research question is: “how social entrepreneurs perceive the added value of design thinking for their organisation?”. Our hypothesis is that design thinking may provide added value regarding the social mission, the financial sustainability and the competitiveness of social enterprises. This study follows a qualitative research approach: it was conducted through interviews and online questionnaires with a series of social entrepreneurs in Scotland. They all participated to the “Boost by Design” programme in February/March 2017 developed by “Creative Dundee”. This project introduced design thinking methods to 13 social enterprises through participatory workshops. These interviews were completed with observation of the programme implementation during a traineeship at “Creative Dundee” in the same period.
The findings of our enquiry show that social entrepreneurs consider that design thinking is both accessible and useful. It enables them to be more creative and make them realise their users are a resource for improvement and innovation in their organisation. Hence, these results support the hypothesis that design thinking could help social enterprises to become more sustainable in the long term, especially considering their social mission, their financial sustainability and their competitiveness. The thesis proposes a model that summarizes the main results and thus contributes to better understand the potential of design thinking for social enterprises, while highlighting the new avenues for further research.

social entrepreneur --- social enterprise --- design thinking --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Gestion de l'entreprise & théorie des organisations

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Over the past few years, there has been a growing interest in the measurement of companies’ social impact. This can be explained by several reasons: firstly, budget restrictions tend to push the government to invest in social companies whose social impact can be evaluated. Secondly, the rise of Impact Investing and Venture Philanthropy in recent years, which are investors who seek investment with both a social and a financial return, has motivated companies to demonstrate their social impact to attract them. In addition, non-profit organisations want to legitimate their presence on the market and prove that they respond to the needs of the population that are not met by the classic market or by the government. 
Following this trend, Oxymmo, a social cooperative located in Belgium, has decided to evaluate its social impact, and this is what this thesis entitled “Assessment of Oxymmo’s social impact” is working towards.
Oxymmo prevents over-indebted families from losing their house and facing all the negative consequences. To achieve this goal, Oxymmo supports these families through a new process that they have established, called the OXY-PLAN, based on a Belgian law, “la vente en réméré”. It allows them to stay in their house after selling it, and when they are debt-free, they can buy their house back at the same price they sold it. 
The objective of this thesis is to determine if the OXY-PLAN has a real social impact on the families and the communities concerned. As it analyses theories of social impact, interviews and results, this thesis walks its readers trough every step of the social impact’s measurement until the final results. At the end, a tool is provided to Oxymmo to pursue the assessment of its social impact in the future.

Social impact measurement --- Social Impact assesment --- Social enterprise --- Monetarization --- Net Impact --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Economie sociale

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Depuis peu, notre région voit éclore des projets entrepreneuriaux sous forme de coopératives citoyennes. Ces initiatives sont soutenues par les pouvoirs publics et suscitent l’engouement des médias. Ces projets remportent un certain succès auprès du grand public qui y voit une opportunité d’investir dans des projets porteurs de sens dans le cadre d’appels publics à l’épargne. Les sociétés coopératives visées par cette étude ont la particularité d’être agréée par le CNC et certaines ont une finalité sociale. Ces nouvelles sociétés suscitent l’intérêt des financeurs publics et privés. Mais, certains projets sont freinés à cause de la méconnaissance de cette forme d’entreprise atypique. Il semble que les dossiers de ces projets manquent d’une formalisation adaptée. En effet, les sociétés coopératives « citoyennes », de par leur nature, ont des pratiques et font des choix de gestion qui leur sont spécifiques. Certains de ces choix ont un impact visible, ou non, sur les états financiers. Actuellement, le schéma des comptes annuels d’une coopérative ne permet pas une compréhension aisée de leur modèle économique et compromet la qualité de l’évaluation du dossier par des financeurs potentiels. L’étude vise à définir le concept de coopérative citoyenne, relever les pratiques et les choix de gestion spécifiques aux coopératives citoyennes et déterminer l’impact réel ou potentiel de ces choix sur les états financiers et leur analyse, concevoir un canevas reprenant les pratiques associées à des indicateurs et enfin valider l’intérêt de ce canevas auprès des acteurs de terrain et présenter leur feedback.

cooperative --- Multi-stakeholder cooperatives --- citizen cooperative --- cooperative citoyenne --- social enterprise --- financial analysis --- Stakeholder --- diagnostic financier --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Comptabilité & audit