Individual Incentive Strategies

Having introduced the business model as unit of analysis in the previous chapter and specified the different dimensions of the concept for social entrepreneurial organizations, this chapter analyses selected strategies used by social entrepreneurial organizations to catalyze public goods provision with the help of incentives. The business model dimensions specified for social entrepreneurial organizations serve as a framework to structure the different strategies according to their thematic area. To identify the strategies analysed, a database has been set up that integrates business model characteristics of thirty-four social entrepreneurial organizations.1 The database allowed patterns in social entrepreneurial behaviour to be identified, leading to the discovery of specific incentive strategies.2 Since the value proposition is relevant for the design of the whole business model, the value proposition strategies occupy an exceptional position among the other strategies. While the other strategies represent options from which social entrepreneurs choose, each social entrepreneurial organization can be related to one of the three value proposition strategies. Some of the incentive strategies analysed in this chapter depend on the value proposition strategy applied. Social entrepreneurial organizations create different strategies regarding their product design and market definition, their internal value creation architecture and their external value creation architecture.