Having recently published an article on conceptualizing "success", when I saw "Redefining Success" in Vietnam (published locally), I picked it up. The book presents brief stories about people who started NGOs, social enterprises and corporations that serve a public good. The book is written by Dinh Duc Hoang, Nguyen Huu Phung Nguyen, Nguyen Ngoc Long, and Nguyen Thi Quynh Giang and published by Women's Publishing House in Ha Noi. A few notes:

"A third dimension shared by these social pioneers is the courage to stand alone and convince a community to accept a new perspective, a new mindset, and encourage them to place their confidence in a person who has not received it before. They encounter difficulties explaining themselves. Given their own "unreasonable" nature, social entrepreneurs face the risk of being misunderstood regarding their motives, being besmirched, doubted, challenged or resisted." (p. 10)

"Nhung kept asking herself how to bring Do paper back to the daily lives of Vietnamese people. That was the only way to help do paper survive time. They decided to develop a social project with a mission of making contemporary products with the focus on paper conservation and development. However, it was never an easy job. According to Nhung, in Vietnam there is now only one family making Do paper on a regular basis…" (p. 64)

"The social entrepreneurs in the book chose social enterprises as their instruments to remedy and settle these social issues. Social enterprise represents a philosophy, a conduct an approach to social issues. Social enterprises operate based on the philosophy that an extremely crucial activity, business (including, in a broader sense, research, innovation, production of and trade in goods and services) creates the major impacts defining society." (p. 253)