Creativity and Emotions as Drivers for Social Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship is closely related to welfare because social welfare emerges when creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship are developed together, creating a ‘cluster of value’ that appears when several value chains are bundled together, resulting in increased employment. This paper presents three cases in which a main character drives a ‘cluster of value’: Father Arizmendiarrieta, Mr Huarte and Mr Pérez ‘Peridis’. Findings show the relevance of emotions, the role of teams and experts that recognize innovations, the relevance of stakeholder wealth and the importance of linking day-to-day challenges to social entrepreneurship, because creativity is closely related to everyday concerns.

Keywords:

• Social entrepreneurship
• creativity
• multiple case study
• emotional intelligence
• emotions

Note

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Figure 1. Relationship between creativity (emotions), entrepreneurship and innovation. Cluster of Value. Source: Author’s elaboration from De Val and Erro (2017). .

Figure 2. Relationship between creativity and emotions. Social workers as emotional inspirers. Source: Adapted from Newton (2013).

Notes

1 According to the European 2020 Strategy, the European Union’s employment rate should reach 75% before 2020, which is an ambitious objective taking into account that the economic crisis has had effects on European unemployment, and especially, on youth unemployment (Scarpetta, Sonnet, and Manfredi 2010).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) under Grant [ECO2017-86305-C4-4-R].