Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Nurturing the Institutional Sine Qua Non for the Informal Sector

Social enterprises (SEs) have sprouted in India over the past couple of decades, addressing several social and economic demands. But their emergence and evolution, partaking of the market and the state, has received little academic attention. Besides the compelling reason that the state has to and can play a major role in facilitating SEs that ensure inclusive development, there is an institutional imperative, a need to explore and explain the institutions (rules and norms) that are at the heart of social innovation and lead to the creation and growth of SEs. This chapter argues that the SEs embody a set of principles that are central to inclusive innovation. Here, the social entrepreneur’s capacity to question existing norms, rules and ways of working and find alternative norms that ensure social value and prosperity for the ‘excluded’ become the game changer. The analysis leads us to question what scale means to the SE, and whether and how the Indian state can enable an appropriate ecosystem for fostering and upscaling SEs.