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The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a higher education social enterprise program and explore how it is shaping the field of social entrepreneurship. Social enterprise related university programs are an emerging trend. Entrepreneurial university theory and ecosystem framework are used to illustrate how the university social enterprise program, in turn, develops the field of social entrepreneurship. An example of an existing social enterprise program is discussed to highlight how it can be designed. Cases of social enterprises emerged as the result of the program are used to outline the different impacts that such support to social entrepreneurship might have. The research chapter reveals the multi-dimensional nature of the social enterprise program and its impact on students establishing their own social enterprises. It suggests that the incubation and other support activities should expand beyond the university program including a variety of network partners. The chapter provides empirical evidence of social enterprise development in a higher education institution and contributes to the global body of knowledge about fostering social enterprise development. As the provision of social entrepreneurship education is new in Estonia and the discussions on social enterprises are premature, the number of social entrepreneurship development partners is limited and hence the empirical data is currently scarce. The journey towards an entrepreneurial university is limited due to the lack of legal support and suitable infrastructure which would enhance project-based learning, support ‘spin-offs’ and patenting and rather engenders a more traditional academic learning environment.

Background: All three Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, faced similar historical contexts and challenges. Currently, Baltic countries have created a favourable environment for entrepreneurship and have an active civil society sector. However, the social enterprise sector in the Baltic states is very young and still developing. Baltic countries have great potential for developing and expanding social enterprises through various support infrastructures. The solutions implemented to support the development of social enterprises differ in all three countries. Research objectives: This article aims to identify social entrepreneurship support incentives in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.Research design and methods: The paper uses literature review, document analysis, and comparative analysis results. Results:The study revealed that all three Baltic states are gradually taking steps towards establishing a social enterprise ecosystem. However, Estonia and Lithuania lack supportive legal frameworks and tax support systems for SEs. The development of supportive regulatory environments could help to grow the sector and solve many conceptual issues. Conclusions: The governments could, therefore, adopt a legal regulation and a clear definition of SEs to build a shared understanding of the field between all sectors and to implement future governmental strategies with identified coordinating structures, roles, and missions of SEs for far more successful collaboration.

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The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted higher education worldwide. Higher education institutions needed to adapt very rapidly to the crisis and a new environment, and also needed to revise their role in society. Higher education institutions can contribute to social innovation through research, education and helping to address citizens’ issues and communities’ needs, which is why the creation of social labs by higher education institutions has increased in the last decades. Social labs are spaces where higher education institutions experiment and test new ideas. However, social labs at higher education institutions are still a relatively new phenomenon and have not yet been examined sufficiently. Moreover, it is not fully known how COVID-19 affected social labs’ activities and impacted their establishment. To reflect on the current reality, this article focuses on two research questions: (1) How were social lab activities and partnerships affected during the pandemic? and (2) What impact has COVID-19 had on social labs? To answer these questions, a quantitative survey was conducted, and the data was analysed by quantitative and qualitative methods. The results showed that the biggest challenge lies in organisational processes and human resources management. Yet, it should be noted that COVID-19 also provided opportunities. They are mainly linked with an impulse to develop innovations and increase digitisation in social labs. The study showed that social labs with flexible organisational processes and human resource management were more successful in their adaptation to crisis conditions caused by COVID-19. In summary, this article provides insight into social labs in higher education institutions by bridging an existing knowledge gap in scientific literature, and expands on it by investigating pandemics as having a crisis impact on social lab development.