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Social innovation: a window on alternative ways of organizing and innovating

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The term ‘social innovation’ is used to describe a broad range of organizational and inter-organizational activity that is ostensibly designed to address the most deep-rooted ‘problems’ of society, such as poverty, inequality and environmental degradation. Theoretically, however, this presents challenges because many of the ideas and practices grouped under the label of social innovation may have relatively little in common. In this article, we outline a simple framework for categorizing different types of social innovation – social entrepreneurship, social intrapreneurship, and social extrapreneurship – which we believe provides a useful basis for theory building in this area. We also offer suggestions for future research with the potential to deepen, extend and refine our typology.
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Innovation
Organization & Management
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Social innovation: a window on alternative ways of
organizing and innovating
Paul Tracey & Neil Stott
To cite this article: Paul Tracey & Neil Stott (2017) Social innovation: a window on alternative
ways of organizing and innovating, Innovation, 19:1, 51-60, DOI: 10.1080/14479338.2016.1268924
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14479338.2016.1268924
Published online: 28 Dec 2016.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14479338.2016.1268924
ESSAY
Social innovation: a window on alternative ways of organizing
and innovating
Paul Tracey and Neil Stott
Centre for Social Innovation, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Trumpington St,
Cambridge, CB2 1AG, UK
ABSTRACT
The term ‘social innovation’ is used to describe a broad range of
organizational and inter-organizational activity that is ostensibly
designed to address the most deep-rooted ‘problems’ of society, such
as poverty, inequality and environmental degradation. Theoretically,
however, this presents challenges because many of the ideas and
practices grouped under the label of social innovation may have
relatively little in common. In this article, we outline a simple
framework for categorizing dierent types of social innovation – social
entrepreneurship, social intrapreneurship, and social extrapreneurship
– which we believe provides a useful basis for theory building in this
area. We also oer suggestions for future research with the potential
to deepen, extend and rene our typology.
Introduction
Innovation research is focused overwhelmingly on one organizational form: the for-prot
rm. Without meaning to oversimplify, at the core of this work is a concern with the pro-
cesses through which rms create and appropriate value in the context of unmet market
needs (Jacobides, Knudsen, & Augier, 2006). Value, in this context, is economic value.
Given the apparently dominant role of rms in most societies and economies, it is perhaps
unsurprising that this view of innovation should be the prevailing one. But for the growing
number of researchers like us, who are interested in a dierent type of innovation – oen
labelled social innovation – it is a very narrow view.
Social innovation is a contested term. It tends to be dened quite generically as the cre-
ation and implementation of new solutions to social problems, with the benets of these
solutions shared beyond the connes of the innovators. Given the constraints of space, we
will not consider in detail the theoretical issues raised by this denition, but for those who
are interested the chapter by Lawrence, Dover, and Gallagher (2014) provides an excel-
lent critique. ese authors argue that such a denition is open to challenge along several
dimensions. For example, they point to the socially constructed nature of social problems,
and explain how particular moral assumptions about who is and is not ‘worthy’ of support
– which tend to reect the values of elites – shape whether issues become categorized as
KEYWORDS
Social innovation; social
entrepreneurship; social
intrapreneurship; social
extrapreneurship
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 20 November 2016
Accepted29 November 2016
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Paul Tracey p.tracey@jbs.cam.ac.uk
52 P. TRACEY AND N. STOTT
‘problems’; that ideas of novelty or newness are embedded in distinct social and historical
contexts and therefore are seldom clear cut; and that the distribution of ‘benets’ is an
inherently political process, which means that the ‘impacts of social innovation are never
ethically neutral”’ (Lawrence, Dover, & Gallagher, 2014, p. 325).
Leaving to one side the denitional issues, the study of social innovation is intriguing
from an organizational standpoint because, in addition to rms, a range of organizational
forms and processes seldom considered in work on conventional’ innovation are impli-
cated in it. From our perspective, these forms – which can be termed broadly as social
purpose organizations – are inherently interesting. ey operate in the public, private and
social sectors, as well as the intersections between them, although as Nicholls and Murdoch
(2012, p. 8) point out, social innovators oen position themselves against these labels
the intractable nature of social challenges such as poverty, inequality and environmental
degradation ‘are seen as highlighting the failure of conventional solutions and established
paradigms… across all three sectors of society: private sector market failure; public sector,
siloed thinking; a lack of scale in, and fragmentation across, civil society.
Excellent descriptions of many of the key social purpose organizational forms are to
be found in Pearce (2003), who distinguished between social and community enterprises,
social rms, fair trade businesses, social businesses, local exchange trading systems, and
time banks. More recently, Dubb (2016) outlined a series of ‘community wealth building
forms, including employee stock ownership plan companies, co-operatives, community
development nance institutions, community development corporations, social enterprises,
and municipal enterprises. In addition, social movements and movement organizations also
play a key role in shaping how social ‘problems’ and their ‘solutions’ are constructed, and
in promoting, resisting and reversing the ideas and practices that underpin social change
(Givan, Roberts, & Soule, 2010). As digital technology has diused, new kinds of grass-
roots innovation movements – ‘variously called hackerspaces, fablabs and makerspaces’, and
which are based around ‘open access, community-based design and fabrication workshops’
– have emerged throughout the world, some of which are directly concerned with social
issues and challenges (Smith, Fressoli, Abrol, Arond, & Ely, 2017, p. 100). Of these many
and varied forms, only social enterprise has received anything approaching a thorough
treatment by innovation researchers, yet it is arguably one of the least interesting types of
organizing within the social innovation landscape.
On the face of it, all of this implies a treasure chest of opportunities for researchers. From
a conceptual standpoint, however, it raises a fundamental question: how do we approach
such a broad range of organizational forms and activities, and create a set of theoretical
ideas around them that builds on existing work in innovation and organization research,
while at the same time accounts for the distinctive nature of the organizational processes
grouped under the label of social innovation? In the next section, we outline a simple frame-
work for categorizing social innovation that comprises three dierent processes social
entrepreneurship, social intrapreneurship, and social extrapreneurship – which we believe
could provide a useful basis for theory building in this area (see Table 1).
A social innovation typology: social entrepreneurship, social
intrapreneurship and social extrapreneurship
Social entrepreneurship is the most well-known of the categories in our typology. is is
due, at least in part, to the media prole of people such as Blake Mycoskie (who founded
INNOVATION: ORGANIZATION & MANAGEMENT 53
controversial venture TOMS Shoes) and Muhammad Yunus (who popularized micro-
nance) who self-identify as social entrepreneurs. From an academic standpoint, there is
already quite a signicant body of work that has emerged to conceptualize social entre-
preneurship (Dacin, Dacin, & Tracey, 2011). While this is of course to be welcomed, it is
worth noting that few debates in management research can be as fraught – and perhaps as
circular – as the debate about the meaning of this term. We think of social entrepreneurship
as the process of creating and growing a venture, either for-prot or non-prot, where the
motivation of the entrepreneur is to address a particular social challenge or set of chal-
lenges. As with the broader concept of social innovation, this denition raises a number of
issues (for example, how can the ‘true’ motivation of the entrepreneur be ascertained in any
meaningful sense, and what makes a challenge social’?). For those who are interested in the
nuances of the denitional debates surrounding social entrepreneurship, Dacin, Dacin, and
Matear (2010) provide a thorough synthesis and critique of the main issues.
Most of the work on social entrepreneurship is concerned with social enterprise (e.g.
Smith, Gonin, & Besharov, 2013; Tracey & Jarvis, 2007), and to a lesser extent community
enterprise (e.g. Haugh, 2007; Peredo & Chrisman, 2006), as the focal organizational forms,
but the concept applies equally to the broad range of social purpose organizations high-
lighted above. eoretically, much of the research to date has treated social entrepreneurship
as the process of creating and sustaining ‘hybrid organizations’ that combine elements of
dierent kinds of organization from the for-prot and non-prot worlds (see Battilana &
Lee, 2014 for a comprehensive review). For example, drawing on the context of institutional
logics from institutional theory, Battilana and Dorado (2010, p. 1419) studied two micro-
nance organizations in Bolivia designed to address nancial exclusion in poor communities,
revealing how these ventures sustained their hybridity ‘in the absence of a “ready-to-wear”
Table 1.A typology of social innovation.
Social entrepreneurship Social intrapreneurship Social extrapreneurship
Definition: The process of creating and
growing a venture, either
for-profit or non-profit, where
the motivation of the entre-
preneur is to address social
challenges
The process of addressing social
challenges from inside estab-
lished organizations
The process of inter-organiza-
tional action that facilitatesal-
ternative combinations of
ideas, people, places and
resources to address social
challenges
Approach
to social
change:
Creates change through the
founding of new organiza-
tions
Creates change by leveraging
the resources and capabilities
of established organizations
Creates change through plat-
forms that support collective
eort within and between
new and established organ-
izations
Example: Ayzh, an Indian social enterprise
founded by Zubaida Bai
to provide rural women in
India with aordable health
technologies – produced by
women for women.
Arup, the multinational
engineering firm, set up Arup
International Development,
a specialist non-for-profit
venture. The venture provides
a range of services to vulner-
able communities, including
support with disaster re-
sponse and the construction
of sustainable buildings and
infrastructure.
Environmental organizations
including WRAP and the Ellen
MacArthur Foundation are
working with governments,
companies and social sector
organizations to promote the
concept of a ‘circular econo-
my’; i.e. to reconfigure deeply
held attitudes towards the use
and reuse of resources and
‘normalize’ environmentally
sustainable practices.
www.ayzh.com/ www.arup.com/services/inter-
national_development
www.ellenmacarthurfounda-
tion.org/programmes
54 P. TRACEY AND N. STOTT
model for handling the logics they combine.And drawing on organizational identity theory,
Besharov’s (2014) study of a socially focused retailer showed how the diverging values of
organizational members underpinned multiple organizational identities, which posed both
challenges and opportunities for the organization.
While social entrepreneurship research is certainly more developed than research on the
other two processes in our framework, it remains in its infancy. Indeed, although research-
ers have made signicant progress in understanding the tensions and contradictions that
appear to characterize social entrepreneurial activity, many other issues and questions are
only beginning to be considered. ese issues include emerging research on, for example,
the nature of social entrepreneurial opportunities (Mair & Noboa, 2006), resource acqui-
sition (Di Domenico, Haugh, & Tracey, 2010), social venture growth (Lyon & Fernandez,
2012), and the identities, values and goals of individual social entrepreneurs (e.g. Wry &
York, in press).
e second type of social innovation in our typology is social intrapreneurship. At the core
of the concept of intrapreneurship is the idea that established organizations are most eec-
tive when they nd ways of harnessing the creative talents of their members (Basso, 2010).
More recently, the concept ofsocial intrapreneurshiphas become increasingly prominent,
attracting muchinterest.However, there is no agreedupon denition, and little research
on the topic (seeKistruck & Beamish, 2010 for an important exception).We view social
intrapreneurship as the process of addressing social challenges from inside established
organizations. In the world of practice, social intrapreneurship has generally been associated
with for-prot rms (Michelini & Fiorentino, 2012), where it has been linked with ideas
such as shared value (Porter & Kramer, 2011) and corporate social innovation (Kanter,
1998). ese concepts emphasize the notion that companies should treat social problems
as commercial opportunities, thereby creating social and commercial value at the same
time. From this perspective, social intrapreneurship is rooted in the apparent ‘comparative
advantage of private rms’ (Hess, Rogovsky, & Dunfee, 2002, p. 116) over governments
and social sector organizations in addressing social problems. Prominent examples include
GE’s ‘Healthyimagination’ initiative, which is focused on improving the aordability and
quality of healthcare around the world, with a strong emphasis focus on the global south.
e extent to which examples such as this one constitute a kind of impression management
or a ‘real’ attempt to address intractable social problems is a matter of some debate (Crane,
Palazzo, Spence, & Matten, 2014).
In addition to rms, social intrapreneurship can also take place in larger public sector and
social sector organizations. With regard to the public sector, there has been a rapid growth
in Public Social Innovation Labs, such as MindLab in Copenhagen and the MaRS Solutions
Lab in Toronto, which claim to draw on design thinking principles to develop solutions to
social challenges in a way that ‘involves citizens’ (Bason, 2016). Increasingly, large social
sector organizations have also become involved in similar approaches. For example, Brac,
which is based in Bangladesh and by some accounts the largest NGO in the world, created
a social innovation lab which, it is claimed, forms ‘a cross-disciplinary platform for BRAC
sta to learn about best practices in development, generate ideas, experiment, and share
knowledge about scalable innovations with the global development community’.1
e third and nal type of social innovation in our framework is social extrapreneur-
ship. Unlike entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, the concept of extrapreneurship is
not common in the literature. In the world of practice, it was originally used as a term for
INNOVATION: ORGANIZATION & MANAGEMENT 55
corporate ‘spin-outs’ – i.e. when a company splits o part of itself to create a new, inde-
pendent company – as distinct from intrapreneurship (the creation of new opportunities
within an organization), and entrepreneurship (the creation of a new venture outside an
extant organization) (Enbar, 1999). More recently,Algoso (2015)highlighted the rise of
a dierent sort of extrapreneur in the international development sector – one who works
beyond organizational boundaries. He argues that ‘extrapreneurs create things in a space that
transcends any one agency. Extrapreneurship is a partnership approach that goes beyond
co-ordination or co-branding. It starts with the network and leverages [resources]… to
create a disproportionately greater development impact.
Reframed in the context of social innovation, social extrapreneurship captures the process
of inter-organizational action that facilitatesalternative combinations of ideas, people, places
and resources to address social challenges and make social change. eoretically, it could be
conceptualized as a form of institutional entrepreneurship (Tracey, Phillips, & Jarvis, 2011),
extra-institutional entrepreneurship (King & Soule, 2007), or institutional work (Lawrence
& Dover, 2015). It is a concept that we believe usefully complements both social entrepre-
neurship and social intrapreneurship.Social extrapreneurs can be characterized as working
in and between organizations and networks, not only to create apparently novel solutions,
but also to develop a range of support mechanisms for the ‘ecosystems’ and ‘platforms’ that
shape social change (Moore & Westley, 2011; Nambisan, 2009; Wallin, 2011).
Like social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, social extrapreneurs can be found in the
public, private and social sectors, but may also work in academia and in network and
social movement organizations. For instance, Engineers Without Borders partners with
companies, government organizations and NGOs to create engineering solutions to the
infrastructure challenges facing the poorest countries. ey are also seeking to build a
movement – a new generation of engineers around the world whose work is underpinned
by the social, ethical and environmental dimensions of engineering design. Examples from
the academic literature include Maguire, Hardy, and Lawrence’s (2004) study of HIV/AIDS
treatment advocacy in Canada, Mair and Marti’s (2009) study of a poverty reduction pro-
gramme in Bangladesh aimed at the ‘ultra-poor’, and Zietsma and Lawrence’s (2010) study
of logging practices in British Columbia.
A research agenda for social innovation
We began by arguing that social innovation is an overarching concept incorporating a
range of organizational and inter-organizational activity ostensibly designed to address the
most deep-rooted ‘problems’ of society. We further suggested that from an organizational
standpoint we can conceptualize social innovation as comprising three core organizational
processes, namely social entrepreneurship, social intrapreneurship, and social extrapreneur-
ship. In this nal main section, we briey consider three areas where our typology could
help structure an emergent social innovation research agenda.
A rst interesting research direction concerns the rise of digital social innovation. e
idea that technology is profoundly reshaping social innovation is gaining much traction. But
is digital technology really an alternative to the face-to-face relationships that have tradi-
tionally been assumed to underpin the activities of social purpose organizations, or merely
a compliment to it? Research that explores the limits and potential of digital technology in
social innovation represents an important line of inquiry. For example, one of the biggest
56 P. TRACEY AND N. STOTT
shis in the social entrepreneurship landscape over the past two decades has been a move
from thinking about social enterprise as rooted in communities of place, exemplied by the
mantra ‘local solutions to local problems’, to social entrepreneurship as a form of technology
entrepreneurship concerned with ‘developing inspiring digital solutions to social challenges’
around the world (Bria, 2015, p. 4). A similar shi has arguably taken place in the context
of social intrapreneurship. For example, we see major global nancial institutions such
as Barclays creating social innovation labs, apparently with a view to using their FinTech
capabilities to tackle social exclusion; and governments around the world are increasingly
focused on ‘public sector digital innovation, which is oen framed as a way of responding
to scal constraints while at the same time increasing and personalizing service quality.
With regard to social extrapreneurship, NGOs and social movement organizations have
made signicant investments in their digital capabilities, which are seemingly designed to
harness stakeholder support and facilitate social objectives. is applies not only to new
ventures – NGOs such as Oxfam, that are oen considered, perhaps unfairly, as conserva-
tive and reluctant to change, are also making signicant investments in digital technology.
e landscape is moving very quickly, but social innovation researchers have been slow to
explore the implications of this digital ‘revolution’. We think it will be important to consider
the role played by ‘real’ face-to-face relationships at the grass roots of communities, versus
relationships and ‘solutions that are developed and deployed virtually. e technology
innovation literature (e.g. Asheim, Coenen, & Vang, 2007) suggests that the dynamics are
likely to be nuanced – the idea that virtual relationships can replace face-to-face ones in
addressing problems in the poorest communities may well be misplaced.
Second, we think that there is a signicant opportunity to build on emerging research
on social innovation from a critical perspective (Steyaert & Dey, 2010). is work explores,
inter alia, the role of elites in shaping the social innovation landscape and the potential ‘dark
side’ of social innovation activity. For example, with respect to social entrepreneurship, many
non-prot organizations feel under pressure to adopt the language and practices associated
with social enterprise even when they are ideologically opposed to doing so. is dynamic
is illustrated in a revealing study by Dey and Teasdale (2015), who show how social sec-
tor actors may engage in ‘tactical mimicry’ – publically identifying with the discourse of
social enterprise in order to acquire resources, while at the same time privately expressing
disdain for it and characterizing its core ideas as neoliberal ‘bullshit’. With regard to social
intrapreneurship, particularly in the corporate sector, there has been much debate about
whether ideas such as shared value are simply forms of impression management designed
to maximize revenues. Indeed, some of the companies extolled as developing ‘best practice
shared value initiatives have, at the very least, serious questions to ask about their com-
mitment to responsible business practices. For example, Walmart is oen put forward as a
shared value exemplar for its ‘greening’ of its supply chain. At the same time, the company
has been much criticized for its allegedly exploitative supply chain practices (Allen, 2016).
In addition, there is signicant opportunity to consider social extrapreneurship from a
critical perspective. For instance, major foundations have invested huge resources to address
the eects of poverty and inequality around the world, and are amongst the highest prole
social extrapreneurial actors. But they have done so in ways that emphasize a particular set
of assumptions about social change. For example, the Gates Foundation has advocated a
key role for the private sector in global health reform, which raises a ‘fundamental question
about the mandate and role of a foundation in promoting and shaping policies on core health
INNOVATION: ORGANIZATION & MANAGEMENT 57
systems issues … to whom is the Gates Foundation accountable for the promotion of such
policies?’ (McCoy, Kembhavi, Patel, & Luintel, 2009, p. 1651). is insight resonates with
important work in post-colonial theory (e.g. Kohn & McBride, 2011) that conceptualizes
Western intervention in poor countries as far from benevolent, because it reinforces rather
than ameliorates poverty and inequality by creating dependency relationships. We believe
these issues represent vitally important ones for social innovation researchers, particularly
in the context of a social innovation movement that is sometimes reluctant to discuss, or
even acknowledge, a possible dark side.
A third and nal area of inquiry concerns geography and the role of place in social inno-
vation. e challenges facing social innovators vary signicantly depending on the nature of
the institutional context in which they are operating, but this issue tends to be glossed over
in the literature, with researchers seemingly reluctant to build theory about how the practice
of social innovation diers, for instance, between countries in the global north versus the
global south. Yet clearly there are signicant dierences. For example, social entrepreneurs
in countries such as Vietnam, where social enterprise as an organizational form is only just
emerging, face a particular set of categorical challenges. is means that building legitimacy
and a coherent organizational identity is much harder than in countries such as the UK
and the US where social enterprise as a category is very well established (Vergne & Wry,
2014). With respect to social intrapreneurship, established organizations also face dierent
opportunities and constraints in dierent parts of the world. For example, large NGOs are
oen viewed with deep suspicion by state actors in countries such as Russia and Indonesia.
is renders their activities precarious, particularly when dealing with culturally sensitive
issues, as the threat of expulsion or even arrest hangs over them (Jenkins, 2012). Similarly,
social extrapreneurs face barriers to achieving collective impact in some geographies that do
not exist in others because ‘rapid and oen hostile … political, economic and social changes
place signicant pressures on organizational and inter-organizational activity (Luthans &
Ibrayeva, 2006, p. 93). We nd it curious that the literature to date – even the institutional
theory literature – has tended to play down the role of context in social innovation. In this
respect, work by researchers such as Johanna Mair has played a key role in highlighting the
distinctive nature of social innovation in the countries of the global south, and introduced
a set of empirical contexts that are sorely under-represented in the mainstream literature
(see, for example, Mair, Wolf, & Seelos, in press).
Conclusion
On reading the burgeoning social innovation literature, one might be forgiven for think-
ing that it is a new phenomenon. It is not: social innovation as we currently understand
it has a rich and fascinating history stretching at least as far back as the cooperative and
social business movements of the Victorian era (McGowan & Westley, 2015) and probably
much farther, but of course in a general sense social innovation is as old as civilization
itself. ere is much to be learned from the successes and failures of the social innovators
of the last 200years; i.e. by taking a ‘long view’ of social innovation. At the same time,
the organizational architecture of societies and economies around the world continues to
evolve, with profound consequences for social innovation moving forward. For example,
it is unclear if ‘we will soon nd ourselves in a world in which for-prot organizations and
their alliances rule the world’ as Barley (2016, p. 7) has argued, or a world that is shiing
58 P. TRACEY AND N. STOTT
markedly to alternative organizational forms that represent ‘more democratic and locally
owned enterprise’ as Davis (2016, p. 129) has argued. Regardless of whether Barley or Davis
is shown to be ‘right’, the decades ahead will surely continue to be dened to a signicant
extent by a set of critical organizational challenges with respect to poverty, inequality and
environmental degradation.
Whether one takes the view that social innovation in its various guises represents a
sophisticated form of impression management designed to frame organizations in a posi-
tive light, maximize resource acquisition, and reinforce global inequalities, or an altruistic
endeavour designed to solve the world’s most intractable social challenges and recongure
global governance to place power in the hands of disenfranchised communities, it is focused
on a set of issues that matter to a shared future. Studying the organizational activities and
processes subsumed under the umbrella of social innovation provides researchers with an
opportunity to move away from ‘advancing an arguably narrow intellectual agenda in the
service of academic and commercial elites’ (Tracey & Creed, in press) and instead to ‘begin
to look outwards and ask how organizations are altering our society’ (Barley, 2016, p. 7).
Such a shi is surely much needed.
Note
1. http://innovation.brac.net/
Acknowledgements
is work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number 60354). Many
of the ideas germinated in 2011 when Neil Stott was Chief Executive of Keystone Development Trust
and Paul Tracey was engaged in an ESRC funded participant observation study at Keystone.
Funding
is work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council [grant number 60354].
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... The socio-psychological perspective of social enterprise creates an understanding of the innovative application of local resources for functions (Saunders et al., 2015;Tracey & Stott, 2021). It creates a positive perspective on business and goodwill with the agencies and consumers. ...
... Nevertheless, these innovative ideas are a life savior for the social entrepreneur and the local communities (Buratti et al., 2022;Tracey & Stott, 2021). Availability of these socially inclined products and services are available in the common marketplace and will allow access for individuals and communities. ...
... Social enterprises generate value for society with their innovative products, services, and processes to provide solutions to problems at affordable prices (Tracey & Stott, 2021). However, this is caused by the tacit nature of knowledge produced by social enterprises, which policymakers, other agencies, and academics tend to underestimate (Barber, 2004). ...
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... This article builds on recent efforts to outline the conceptual and methodological parameters of social innovation research (Tracey and Stott, 2017;Pel et al., 2020;van der Have and Rubalcaba, 2016) by responding to calls for further refinement through empirical investigation (Gurrutxaga and Galarraga, 2022). Our focus on Shared Lives (SL) also responds to calls for critical research that scrutinises public policy interventions (Baptista et al., 2019) and the bold claims often made regarding the transformative potential of social innovations in policy discourse (Ayob et al., 2016;Gurrutxaga and Galarraga, 2022;Pel et al., 2020). ...
... We also acknowledge the need to guard against 'normative idealism' and 'pro-innovation bias' (Pel et al., 2020) when considering social innovations. It is important to recognise that social innovation initiatives can have unintended consequences and both positive and negative impacts for different groups (Lindhult, 2008;Pel et al., 2020;Tracey and Stott, 2017). ...
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... Social innovations provide highest impact for the society at the inter-organizational and system dimension, while giving impetus to the rise of social enterprises at organizational dimension and social entrepreneurship at individual dimension (Westley and Antadze, 2010). In addition to social entrepreneurship (see Phillips et al. (2015) systematic literature review on social innovation and social entrepreneurship), which facilitates social change through the establishment of new organizations, Tracey and Stott (2017) contend that social innovation can also be realized through social intrapreneurship (i.e., effecting social change by harnessing the resources and capacities of existing organizations) and social extrapreneurship (i.e., driving social change through platforms that facilitate collective action within and between both new and established organizations). For instance, Ali et al. (2023) suggest that social media platforms exert a positive influence on the performance of social enterprises by facilitating social collaboration, social marketing, crowdfunding, and crowdsourcing. ...
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