Social entrepreneurship and innovation : a case study on international awards

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to explore the relationship between innovation and social entrepreneurship, to investigate the ways in which social entrepreneurship can be innovative, and to understand how such innovativeness can be evaluated. In order to complete the research objectives, six international awards of social entrepreneurship have been investigated. A representative of each organization has been interviewed and organizational documents have been researched. The findings show a strong connection between innovation and social entrepreneurship, a relationship that can be considered inherent to the concept of social entrepreneurship. The most common types of innovations among social entrepreneurs are found to be (1) the use and reuse of existing assets of marginalized groups, (2) the provision of tailor made service packages to the ones in need, (3) business model innovation, (4) incremental technological innovation and (5) the opening of new markets. Social entrepreneurs can be labelled as creative imitators and constant innovators. The most widespread system of assessment among the investigated organizations regarding the evaluation of the relative innovativeness of social entrepreneurship is the utilization of experts. These findings shed light on the topic of social entrepreneurship which, in spite of the interest demonstrated by scholars in the topic, is still in its infancy where research is concerned.