Sustainopreneurship
Sustainopreneurship (entrepreneurship and innovation for sustainability) is an idea that emerged from the earlier concepts of social entrepreneurship and ecopreneurship, via sustainability entrepreneurship. The concept aims to use creative business organization in order to solve problems related to sustainability. With social and environmental sustainability as a strategic objective and purpose, sustainopreneurship aims to respect the boundaries set in order to maintain the life support systems in the process. In other words, it is a "business with a cause" – where ideally world problems are turned into business opportunities by deploying sustainability innovations. Definition The definition first introduced in 2006 is: Deployment of sustainability innovations: Entrepreneurship and innovation for sustainability. Short for sustainability intra-/entrepreneurship. To focus on one or more (world/social/sustainability-related) problem(s), find/identify and/or invent a solution to the problem(s) and bring the innovation to the market by creating an efficient organization. With the (new alternative deep transformation of an old) mission/cause-oriented sustainability business adding ecological/economical/social values, with a bias towards the intangible – through dematerialization/resocialization. The value added at the same time preserving, restoring and/or ultimately enhancing the underlying utilized capital stock, in order to maintain the capacity to fulfill the needs of present and coming generations of stakeholders. Conceptual development The business has been nominated as a premier force for creating a sustainable world, especially when acting as a source of innovation and creativity – e. g. as Robinson (2004:378) puts it: "In addition to integrating across fields, sustainability must also be integrated across sectors or interests. It is clear that governments alone have neither the will nor the capability to accomplish sustainability on their own. The private sector, as the chief engine of economic activity on the planet, and a major source for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship, must be involved in trying to achieve sustainability." Sustainopreneurship is a candidate to be the accentuating factor to give even more leverage to forces emerging from world of business activities to contribute to sustainability. The concept of sustainopreneurship was first introduced as a term in 2000 where it was predominantly related to the proactive change management approaches associated with process adjustment with increased respect to the environment. The phenomenon developed with publications in 2003, and further evolved and was tentatively defined in 2006 by Anders Abrahamsson. This tentative definition was empirically tested in his Master thesis, where the enactive research process confirmed that the definition stood the test contrasting it towards the auto-ethnographical empirical material. A paper to identify future research challenges was made beyond this in 2007, and developed further with a book chapter published in September 2008. In general, the entrepreneurial discourse has opened up to move beyond a strictly economic phenomenon, rather than being perceived primarily as a social process at large. Preceding the conceptual formation were two traces of social entrepreneurship and eco-preneurship, dealing primarily with the social and ecological dimensions of sustainability. Primary associations with social entrepreneurship have also been establishing not-for-profit venturing and charities to innovatively address and solve social problems, whereas ecopreneurship has been