Project Abstract
Social entrepreneurship has seen a rapid rise in recent years. Although New Zealand is backing this trend, there is limited scholarly attention to this topic in the region. We still lack in-depth understandings of how the decisions of these entrepreneurs lead to the social ventures. Thus, it is necessary to trace back the journey of social entrepreneurs and look at the factors that lead to venture formation and development. In this study, we adopt a life story method, which follows a narrative approach and is inductive in nature. It focuses on how the respondents connect their past, present and future with references to particular life events. For this investigation, we selected 20 New Zealand social entrepreneurs from a pool of interviewees and conducted analysis. Initial results showed that at certain points in their lives, many of the social entrepreneurs alluded to the inner urge to search for a more meaningful existence instead of simply working for economic reasons. This often came from their exposure a
