One stop shop for social enterprise resources

: the case of seToolbelt

Abstract

The concept of social entrepreneurship has become well-established in business as a beneficial approach to achieve a desired social change. The purpose of this dissertation is to raise awareness of the field of social entrepreneurship, the needs of practitioners, and the opportunities of open source sharing as well as crowdsourcing in this area. At the beginning, an overview of the main literature and research on social entrepreneurship and the potential of Web 2.0 for firms is provided. The methodology adapted is a case study approach with the scope of presenting the story of seToolbelt, an online platform that aims to assist social entrepreneurs to grow successful social enterprises. The main challenges the company faces are addressed in the research questions and discussed in the teaching notes that enrich the case study. The first of seToolbelt’s concerns is the ability to motivate users to participate, the second one the impact measurement of its operations. The dissertation concludes by indicating possible approaches to tackle these problems and to identify avenues to take.

Date of Award	14 Sept 2012
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Susana Frazão Ferreira Fernandes Pinheiro (Supervisor)