Social Entrepreneurship: A Way of Developing Social Innovation in Regions

Social innovation results in social changes and develops a potential to create new sources of sustainable growth and jobs. It can be approached as the key factor of regional development. It is especially significant upon reintegration of the unemployed on the labour market. The paper points to the regional dimension of social innovation, especially to one of its instruments - social businesses. Based on the analysis of theoretical approaches to examining the concept of social innovation and its possible positive impact from the viewpoint of territorial development, the objective of the paper is to present the current status of social businesses at European level and characterise their importance and position in Slovakia in terms of support of regional development.