Social enterprises can be defined as "organisations with an explicit aim to benefit the community, initiated by a group of citizens and in which the material interest of capital investors is subject to limits. They place a high value on their independence and on economic risk-taking related to ongoing socio-economic activity."

The Emergence of Social Enterprise (Borzaga and Defourny, 2001), traced the most significant developments in social entrepreneurship emerging in Europe. Social Enterprise. At the crossroads of market, public policies and civil society (Nyssens, 2006) develops a comparative European analysis within a multidisciplinary framework to explore social enterprises.