Consumers have, to a large extent, become their own producers; they are more aware of marketing and are active in adding value to the products and experiences they want. By assessing customers as active agents rather than passive consumers, Björn Bjerke explores alternative ways of marketing for new businesses and social entrepreneurial ventures.

This chapter develops a theoretical framework for understanding how entrepreneurship develops in space and place. It takes an eclectic view on entrepreneurship and emphasizes its interactive dependence with different types of context. First, a distinction between a narrow and a broad view of entrepreneurship is introduced. In the narrow view, entrepreneurship is seen as an economic phenomenon satisfying demands in different markets, whilst, in the broad view, entrepreneurship belongs to the whole society, not only to its economy, and is a question of creating something new. Second, the chapter argues for an emerging, bricoleurial way of understanding the entrepreneurial process, rather than the rational, analytically based approach so common in entrepreneurship theory. Third, the chapter presents space and place as theoretical categories; ‘space’ is understood as an economic evaluation of a situation based on its capacity for profit, and ‘place’ is seen as a societal situation based on meaning. Finally, the theoretical framework based on the three distinctions is illustrated by two cases. To conclude, a narrow, goal-rational approach to entrepreneurial venturing works well with context understood as space, whilst a broader, natural understanding of entrepreneurship will include an interactive relation with place.

This book offers an innovative, theory-driven account of social entrepreneurship that is located in new thinking around the constructs of community and "public" entrepreneurship. Bjerke and Karlsson draw on a wide range of sources to offer useful new insights and analyses of this emerging sector and contribute a variety of useful and challenging new models of the relationship between society, innovation, and politics. All in all, this represents a valuable addition to the growing theoretical literature on social innovation and entrepreneurship.