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Sarah-Anne Muñoz and Artur Steinerowski INTRODUCTION Over recent decades the promotion of the Third Sector and, most recently, social enterprise has become much more visible within UK policy and the terms ‘social entrepreneurship’ and ‘social enterprise’ increasingly used to refer to the development of sustainable trading activities conducted for social benefit (Jones & Keogh, 2006; Weerawardena & Mort, 2006). As detailed by Farmer, Hill and Muñoz in the Introduction to this book, social enterprise is promoted as a mechanism through which both economic development and social goals can be met. The public sector is encouraged to ‘procure’ from social enterprises, there is state support for social enterprise start-up and development, and citizens are encouraged to participate in socially entrepreneurial activities. The UK policy agenda surrounding community empowerment, community ownership of assets and service delivery accesses ideas of social business and local entrepreneurialism. Several authors in this volume make reference to the ‘Big Society’ policy agenda which is led by the current UK coalition government and translates notions surrounding community empowerment into support for the co-development and co-production of services by citizens. As Hill indicates in Chapter 1, the current context of public sector cuts implies continuing retraction of the state from service delivery and greater involvement of non-state (e.g. voluntary sector and social enterprise) players, including citizens themselves, in the design, development and delivery of services while Skerratt, in Chapter 2, shows that these issues are relevant beyond the UK. All this suggests that greater attention should be paid to...