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Practical Challenges Of Differentiated, For-Profit Social Ventures, Gabriel M. Blake

Honors Thesis

When social entrepreneurs create a for-profit enterprise focused on addressing a particular public need, there are many specific challenges and barriers that stand in their way of becoming a sustainable, revenue-generating business. Many of these challenges are currently unknown to many nascent social entrepreneurs, and in most cases, these challenges will cause the venture to fail or never reach operational scale (Renko, 1047).

Social entrepreneurs face many unique challenges and barriers that traditional entrepreneurs do not necessarily encounter. Typical challenges include balancing the needs of disparate stakeholders (Smith, 464), maintaining robust cash flows and profits while simultaneously remaining committed to …