Ricerc@Sapienza

In the last two centuries, developed nations have had an unprecedented generation of wealth showing a strong economic
progress. Unfortunately, such economic development has not been witnessed in all countries and it does not represent the
holistic face of the social progress. The main reason stands in the ideological limitations of capitalism itself, often ignoring
local communities and environment while focusing exclusively on profit maximization, market share, dividends and bonuses.
This failure it is also because of the division between two basic entities: nonprofit and for profit sectors. The segregation
created between the economic values and social values, has created a system where the two different entities have failed to
capture and integrate the multi-dimensional nature of the human being to satisfy social needs. Because of this increasing
tension, the society needs to find a common ground solution, where the social and economic benefits of these two entities
are merged together to generate an anti-fragile system. This research is an attempt to determine if the social business (SB)
is capable to solve the problems arose from the free market idealogy, nonprofit philosophy, and the consequent social and
economic inefficiency. Thus, the boundaries between the private, public and nonprofit sectors need to be changed. In addition,
it is aimed to show that SB can solve social, economic, and environmental problems by using the entrepreneurial engine
and the profit instrument, proving at the end to be by default a sustainable business model that respects the triple bottom
line approach. The investigation method is based on literature review and theory development from three different fields:
economics, development studies, and nonprofit management