Possibility of Social Entrepreneur

I'm interested in a concept "Social Entrepreneur". This means to pursue to solve social problems by doing business. There are several approaches to solve social problems. Donation or participation to NGOs or NPOs. However NGO and NPO always have a problem, which is how to raise money to sustain that activities.

Social Entrepreneur is one solution to this issue. They have to come up with good business model which enabes to make money for their activities. If customers or clients are poor people, it is possible to achieve effective business. This is well explained in a book, "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid " by C. K. Prahalad . This book is really nice, which changed my bias to poor peoples's ability to buy.

In Japan, the concept of Social Entrepreneur is growing, but its influence is much smaller than that in US and Europe. I was heard that skillful middle age people are earnest about those activies, in the other hand, younger people such as undergradulate student without business experiences are serious in Japan.

This difference is interesting to me. A guy who knows well about social entrepreneurs in Japan said that middle age pepole in Japan are very nervous to lose their increasing salary and promoting position in companies. What is American or Europian people's incentives to start social business? Is it relating to a sense of religion?

In developed countries, problems that government holds are getting bigger, much more serious. There are lots of inefficiencies, stacked bureaucratic organizations, sectionalism and so on. They exposes their limitation of public services.

My impression is social entrepreneurs are more active if disappointment about public services by government is more serious. Anyway I think this activity has great possibility to change societies better.