Abstract: Events are regarded as an important driving factor for the establishment of social enterprises. Drawing on event system theory, we analyze the impact of events on the establishment process of social enterprises to break through the "cognitive bottleneck" of social enterprises. This paper takes four social enterprises as research samples to conduct a multi-case study on the impact mechanism of events on the process of social entrepreneurship in China with event system theory. Results show that key events play an important role in promoting the process of social entrepreneurship. What’s more, key events play an important moderating role in manifesting social problems, stimulating entrepreneurs' personal characteristics and obtaining social support. Specifically, events could make potential social problems manifesting and stimulate the inherent personal characteristics of social entrepreneurs, which will increase the possibility of identifying opportunities for social entrepreneurship. Furthermore, events could influence other entities to help social entrepreneurs to obtain social support, and then promote the landing of social entrepreneurship at the practical level.