Defining Hybrid Entrepreneurship

This semester, I have been teaching a new class at Clemson in the Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurship. The whole point of the class is to explore, define, articulate, and showcase an emerging entrepreneurial area known as Hybrid Entrepreneurship. Late last year, I wrote about this new emerging area as I was preparing to teach this class…you can read about it by clicking here.

So…the class is compiling case studies and examples of what we define as Hybrid Entrepreneurship. But before we can do that…we have to define as a baseline. So below are four definitions from four groups of students in this class:

  • Improving a social condition with the intent of making profit through traditional and untraditional business methods.
  • An entrepreneurial endeavor with  goal to provide social change. The business has to generate profit but cant give all profits to charity. The product or profit can provide social change and must be disclosed and included in the business plan.
  • One whose focal point is to bring about positive social change or create awareness of a social problem while making a profit.
  • Organization or individual that is driven by a social need, but operation runs with a double bottom line of profit and social.
So if you take each of these four definitions and place them in a word cloud, this is what you would find.


Can you think of any companies that might meet these criteria?