21% to 26% of start-ups in Europe target social, community or environmental goals. Many of them address current challenges with innovate and novel approaches, that can best unfold their full impact potential when brought to scale.

In spite of this clear need for internationalising innovative social ventures, the vast majority of social entrepreneurs operate only on a local scale.

So, why is internationalisation a challenge for social entrepreneurs and what are key competences for social enterprise internationalisation?

Peter Vandor, Magdalena Winkler and Martin Mehrwald have summarized first findings within the ESESII Project on the EUCLID Website.

About ESESII:

Euclid Network, materahub, Synthesis Center for Research and Education, the International SEPT Competence Center at Leipzig University, Social Impact Award and the Social Entrepreneurship Center at WU Vienna have teamed up in the framework of an Erasmus+ KA 2 Project. The main objectives of this project are to identify the skills and competences gap impeding social entrepreneurs to internationalise. Building on these insights, we aim to develop an innovative training curriculum for internationalising social entrepreneurs, as well as support national social enterprises support organisations’ and advise European and national policy-makers to enhance the capacity of social entrepreneurs’ to internationalise.

The project is supported by the European Commission.