Humanity is confronted with the gravest financial crisis and economic recession since the Great Depression. Political leaders, national ministries of finance, and central banks around the world are trying to prop up their countries' sinking economies and arrest a downward economic spiral by innovative financial rescue and bank bailout plans, as well as economic stimulus and recovery packages. These measures are being taken to reestablish trust in the economy and to trigger an economic revival. Despite these efforts, stagnation seems imminent, as uncertainty leads businesses and consumers to place spending and investing decisions on hold.Social entrepreneurs are essential to the restoration of a sustainable planet and the improvement of lives of billions of people, especially of those living in extreme poverty. Therefore, social entrepreneurs deserve further recognition and support by the international community - by governments, multinational companies, and philanthropic organizations. Creating a New Civilization through Social Entrepreneurship highlights the global movement of social entrepreneurship and some of the leading organizations and individuals that are advancing this citizen sector movement. The volume presents examples of innovative people that are tackling major social problems and triggering systemic change throughout the world today.

Humanity is confronted with the gravest financial crisis and economic recession since the Great Depression. Political leaders, national ministries of finance, and central banks around the world are trying to prop up their countries’ sinking economies and arrest a downward economic spiral by innovative financial rescue and bank bailout plans, as well as economic stimulus and recovery packages. These measures are being taken to reestablish trust in the economy and to trigger an economic revival. Despite these efforts, stagnation seems imminent, as uncertainty leads businesses and consumers to place spending and investing decisions on hold. Social entrepreneurs are essential to the restoration of a sustainable planet and the improvement of lives of billions of people, especially of those living in extreme poverty. Therefore, social entrepreneurs deserve further recognition and support by the international community—by governments, multinational companies, and philanthropic organizations. Creating a New Civilization through Social Entrepreneurship highlights the global movement of social entrepreneurship and some of the leading organizations and individuals that are advancing this citizen sector movement. The volume presents examples of innovative people that are tackling major social problems and triggering systemic change throughout the world today.

This contributed volume features state-of-the-art research from ten different countries on implementation, institutionalization and the future prospects of social entrepreneurship. This volume aims at bringing together research that considers the context of economy, politics and cultural issues combining with the needs of social and human development. By conceptualizing the notion of social entrepreneurship and societal entrepreneurship, this volume aims to disseminate the numerous streams of research and theory of social entrepreneurship to educators, libraries, scholars, non-profit researchers, public policy makers, practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students, and any organization or person interested in staying abreast of advances in this area. It is also an important reference book for teachers, students and faculty interested in conducting research or teaching social entrepreneurship. ​

In the last two decades social entrepreneurship has grown in energy and impact as entrepreneurial spirit has increasingly turned to finding solutions for social, cultural and environmental issues. As social entrepreneurship has grown in popularity, so too has its academic study. A Research Agenda for Social Entrepreneurship brings together contributions from developing paths in the field to signpost the directions ahead for the study of social entrepreneurship.

There are few more important philosophers at work today than John Searle, a creative and contentious thinker who has shaped the way we think about mind and language. Now he offers a profound understanding of how we create a social reality--a reality of money, property, governments, marriages, stock markets and cocktail parties. The paradox he addresses in Making the Social World is that these facts only exist because we think they exist and yet they have an objective existence. Continuing a line of investigation begun in his earlier book The Construction of Social Reality, Searle identifies the precise role of language in the creation of all "institutional facts." His aim is to show how mind, language and civilization are natural products of the basic facts of the physical world described by physics, chemistry and biology. Searle explains how a single linguistic operation, repeated over and over, is used to create and maintain the elaborate structures of human social institutions. These institutions serve to create and distribute power relations that are pervasive and often invisible. These power relations motivate human actions in a way that provides the glue that holds human civilization together. Searle then applies the account to show how it relates to human rationality, the freedom of the will, the nature of political power and the existence of universal human rights. In the course of his explication, he asks whether robots can have institutions, why the threat of force so often lies behind institutions, and he denies that there can be such a thing as a "state of nature" for language-using human beings.

The role of design, both expert and nonexpert, in the ongoing wave of social innovation toward sustainability. In a changing world everyone designs: each individual person and each collective subject, from enterprises to institutions, from communities to cities and regions, must define and enhance a life project. Sometimes these projects generate unprecedented solutions; sometimes they converge on common goals and realize larger transformations. As Ezio Manzini describes in this book, we are witnessing a wave of social innovations as these changes unfold—an expansive open co-design process in which new solutions are suggested and new meanings are created. Manzini distinguishes between diffuse design (performed by everybody) and expert design (performed by those who have been trained as designers) and describes how they interact. He maps what design experts can do to trigger and support meaningful social changes, focusing on emerging forms of collaboration. These range from community-supported agriculture in China to digital platforms for medical care in Canada; from interactive storytelling in India to collaborative housing in Milan. These cases illustrate how expert designers can support these collaborations—making their existence more probable, their practice easier, their diffusion and their convergence in larger projects more effective. Manzini draws the first comprehensive picture of design for social innovation: the most dynamic field of action for both expert and nonexpert designers in the coming decades.

From the author of Future Shock, a striking way out of today’s despair . . . a bracing, optimistic look at our new potentials. The Third Wave makes startling sense of the violent changes now battering our world. Its sweeping synthesis casts fresh light on our new forms of marriage and family, on today's dramatic changes in business and economics. It explains the role of cults, the new definitions of work, play, love, and success. It points toward new forms of twenty-first-century democracy. Praise for The Third Wave “Magnificent . . . an astonishing array of information.”—The Washington Post “Imperishably fresh.”—Business Week “Will mesmerize readers, and rightly so.”—Vogue “Alvin Toffler . . . has written another blockbuster . . . a powerful book.”—The Guardian “Fresh ideas, clearly explained. . . . Toffler has proven again that he is a master.”—United Press International “Toffler has imagination and an ability to think of various future possibilities by transcending prevailing values, assumptions and myths.”—Associated Press “Once you have walked into his version of the future, you may decide never again to whitewash some of the built-in frailties of the real present.”—Financial Post “Rich, stimulating and basically optimistic . . . will unquestionably aid many to a greater understanding of [today’s] puzzling social changes.”—The Globe & Mail “A detailed breathtakingly bold projection of the social changes required if we are to survive. . . . Toffler’s vision of a democratic, self-sustaining utopia is a brave alternative to recent grim warnings.”—Cosmopolitan