Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills: List of Skills with Examples. (2021). Retrieved 22 December 2022, from https://www.valamis.com/hub/hard-skills-vs-soft-skills 

To succeed as a social entrepreneur

To succeed as a social entrepreneur, hard and soft skills will be required. Hard skills are about skills and abilities to perform a specific role. For example, hard skills can be interpreting, planning, projecting, managing, marketing, engineering, and more. On the other hand, soft skills are more focused on abilities to perform ‘interpersonal activities.’ Skills such as communicating, leadership, time management, critical and creative thinking, adaptability, etc. Not only hard skills and soft skills but also other essential factors exist that are more likely to be successful as a social entrepreneur. For example, gaining credibility from your teammates, keeping a persistent attitude toward the goal, having good teamwork(not about the strong degrees like Ph.D., it only makes it worse), being resilient, and analyzing past failures are important skills for the successful social entrepreneur.

Fundamental skills and languages in businesses also are essential in social enterprises. The particular reason for this circumstance is that social enterprise is a derived form of business. This is because running a social enterprise makes it easier to face such financial problems, team conflicts, and miscommunications more often than running an ordinary for-profit business. Therefore, business skills and languages are essential to safely and wisely run a social enterprise.

Some often argue that social enterprises must be non-profit because they are built to solve social problems, not for the owner’s wealth. I can strongly disagree with them because even if a particular social enterprise is for-profit or non-profit, what is important is that they put their mission before profit.