Famous examples of social ventures include outdoor gear and apparel makers Patagonia, which promises to protect and preserve the environment, and Tesla Motors which aims to "accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy" with electric vehicles and now solar products.
What drives us is our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable, clean energy, but we will never achieve that mission unless we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable.
"Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy not only through all-electric vehicles, but also scalable clean energy generation and storage products," Robin Ren, Tesla's vice president of Worldwide Sales said in a statement.
The Tesla board, led by its Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, said it considered candidates with a "wide range of skill sets" from across the globe who also hold a strong personal belief in Tesla's mission of accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy.
My goals are to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization, a consequence of which will be the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a more inspiring future for all.
That is where we will find the next big thing that will accelerate the world economy.
To quote from the Tesla website, "Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transportation.
"If Tesla wants to make good on its mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transport, we see the move to a shared mobility model as critical," Jonas wrote.
"What drives us is our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable, clean energy," Musk wrote in an internal email to staff that he later posted to Twitter.
The 2014 progress report on the Global Vaccine Action Plan GVAPP) – the road map to universal immunization by 2020 – shows that if progress isn't rapidly accelerated, the world will fail to protect all children with immunization.
