Social Ventures and Regional Development: Important Contributions Unappreciated

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the important role played by social ventures in regional development. To provide a more comprehensive understanding of the different ways that social ventures may contribute to regional development, I consider the research findings from an extensive range of fields such as ‘social ventures’, ‘regional development’, ‘organizational studies’, ‘non-profits’, ‘community development’, ‘local development’, and ‘social entrepreneurship’. The social ventures’ main contributions are here classified into two broad categories as direct and indirect. The results of this study show some major contributions of social ventures to regional development. These results lend themselves to application not only by regional practitioners and policymakers, but also by social ventures, commercial ventures, and public organizations, in order to find out the different ways all these actors can collaborate at the regional level for their mutual benefit.