Abstract
Against the background of the corona pandemic, economic, and geopolitical crises in the past years, the question of how to achieve a sustainable development recovery has become a critical issue for many organizations and governments. For this reason, in the context of a huge technological leap, our research approach aims to advance the discussion about the triad on which stable and prosperous societies must be laid, is made up of the three pillars: classic, social and public entrepreneurship. This conceptual paper proposes a theory that focuses on the connections and the complementarity of the three types of entrepreneurship. Using a comparative analysis, we adapted and extended the framework proposed by Austin et al. (2006); we started from their proposed four key variables to guide our analysis – mission, market failure, resource mobilization, performance measurement – and we added two other variables: knowledge and technology. We also used the triadic model as a background (Scarlat, 2017). Using the theoretical foundations we laid out, this paper develops a new understanding of social and public entrepreneurship. It also suggests areas for researchers to explore further and makes some practical recommendations for public and social entrepreneurs.