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This study attempts to extend the definition of social innovation within the context of academic entrepreneurship. We consider how academic entrepreneurs can undertake commercial activities, and which ones, and how these activities contribute to the contexts of social innovation. We explore two cases that are derived from two premier universities in Taiwan in terms of research and academic entrepreneurship: OurCityLove from National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) and the Forest app from National Tsing Hua University (NTHU). The two cases show how social enterprises achieved the financial ability to expand their businesses and create the desired social values. While the first case, derived from NCTU, focused on providing useful information on social spaces, and services for the elderly, parents traveling with babies and those with disabilities (and also creating job opportunities for the latter), the other from NTHU created an app to influence those addicted to playing with their smartphones. The cases illustrate how the two universities capitalised on their technological competencies and academic programmes to support graduates and researchers in venturing into social entrepreneurship.

There has been limited study on the role of the startup ecosystem in social entrepreneurship. This article addresses the gap by applying a theoretical framework of startup ecosystem to two social enterprises originating from a Singapore university, examining how they engage with stakeholders to create social impact. WateRoam Pte Ltd is a water innovation startup that deploys cost-effective water filtration solutions to rural communities and disaster-hit locations. Tware is a wearable technology startup with a range of therapeutic products for individuals with autism, stress or anxiety. The two cases provide insights on the ecosystem for social ventures in Singapore. The Finance domain is identified as a potential area of improvement, as there is uncertainty on the appropriate growth trajectory for funding. University incubation and mentor networks are found to be pivotal in extending the Markets domain. Finally, this study highlights the Supports domain in the form of university R&D facilities and accelerator programmes that have been instrumental in strengthening connections. Extending beyond the university context, it is evident that infrastructural resources in the ecosystem are crucial. Policymakers may draw on the experience of countries, like Israel, which have successfully built such support facilities to nurture innovation-based social enterprises.

Recent studies regarding Social Innovation (SI) represent a small percentage of the academic research, and as a consequence the methodologies, focuses, and practices about this topic have not been consolidated. The social innovations generate intangible benefits, mainly qualitative, which makes it difficult to evaluate, even though few authors have indicated the distinguishable characteristics of SI there is not consensus about how to measure it. This document presents the results of a research project with the main objective of identifying the criteria distinguishing SI, and to propose a tool to facilitate its measurement, tracing, and potential assessment. A systematic criteria revision was performed along with a comparative study of eight SI projects from Latin America, prioritizing such criteria. With this information a proposal was developed, including the criteria, associated questions and ponderations. In order to validate the utility of this tool, the evaluation of the project "Implementation of a Solar-Eolic hybrid system in a school in remoted and insolated areas" was performed. The evaluation process allowed to inquire and discover the weaknesses and to explore the limiting causes for every criterion, giving place for recommendations directed to the developers and beneficiaries of the project. Throughout this tool it can be determined whether a project can be considered a successful SI or not; in case of not being successful, the method exerts a simple view of the characteristics that need improvement.

This chapter is about evidence and whether we can, or should, know our impact, the effect we have in the world. It addresses the difficulties as well as the possibilities of evidence for innovators and politicians, civil servants and head teachers, charities and doctors. I also touch on the question at the level of daily life, the moral question of whether we help those around us to be healthier, happier and more prosperous. Knowing our own impacts is, I argue, as much a moral prerogative as the traditional philosophical injunction of knowing ourselves.The enlightenment storyMany of us imbibed from an early age what can be called the enlightenment story. In this story new knowledge is steadily accumulated, mainly in universities and from academic journals. Theories are invented, tested, refuted and then improved. Scepticism helps to refine them and, as Wittgenstein wrote, the child first learns belief and only then learns doubt. You could say that at school we learn knowledge, and then at university we learn to question that knowledge.Belief is strengthened precisely because it has already been knocked down. And so, accumulating knowledge shows that this medicine, that economic policy or this teaching method works and many others don’t. The successful method then spreads, because when you design a better mousetrap the world beats a path to your door. It spreads because people are rational and want to do better and are persuaded by evidence. And so, the world progresses. Light replaces darkness. Effective solutions displace failed ones.It's easy to mock the enlightenment story. The sociologists of science have shown a much messier pattern of change – full of barriers, wilful resistance and peer pressure. But the old enlightenment story contains a good deal of truth and is preferable to the alternatives. Because of intense pressures to act on evidence, and habits of doubt among maintenance staff and engineers, aircraft do not drop out of the sky. Smoking made the slow progress from evidence of harm, through taxes and warnings to full-scale bans, and millions of lives were saved.Experimental methods have been used for many decades.

In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity.One of the fascinating features of the history of science is how often new ways of seeing preceded new insights. The achromatic-lens microscope in the early 19th century paved the way for germ theory, and X-ray crystallography in the early 20th century played a vital role in the later discovery of the structure of DNA. In the same way flows of data – for example, about how people move around a city, or how blood cells change – can prompt new insights.But how important is measurement to social change? Many people are attracted to metrics and indices of all kinds. But, as my colleague Mark Moore used to warn, ‘do you really think the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were counting the placards or measuring the decibels of their cries for human rights?’ In social change, as in our own daily lives, measurement often feels inappropriate for the things that matter most.This chapter examines some of the history of social observation as a tool for public policy, social innovation and social change, and I suggest where it might lead in the future. Without some means of measurement, it can be hard to know if a social innovation is good. It may feel good to the beneficiaries – but still be less effective than an alternative. Or it may work well for one group but not another. And, even if it may not be appropriate to measure the passions of movements, once these ideas become part of the mainstream, and are transformed into the cool logic of laws, regulations and programmes, measurements do start to matter a lot, as the Civil Rights Movement discovered.A short history of measurementFor centuries, governments have sought to map and measure social phenomena in order to better exercise control over them. In the modern era these attempts can be traced back to figures like Sir William Petty in England and the cameralists in Prussia.

The aim of this research is to explore the dynamics and impact of open social innovation, within the context of fab labs and makerspaces. Using an exploratory methodology based on 12 semi-structured interviews of fab lab founders belonging to The Centres for Maker Innovation and Technology (CMIT) programme – a network of 170 fab labs located in Eastern Europe – this research explores the impact of an adopting an open approach in relation to the different stages of social innovation (prompts, proposals, prototypes, sustaining, scaling and diffusion, systemic change) as well as social impact. The main results of this study are that while the CMIT programme provided each fab lab with similar initial conditions (identical funding, objectives and rules), the open social innovation approached adopted enabled to give birth to a wide diversity of fab labs, each being very well adapted to the local environment, social needs and constraints and able to deliver social impact in just a matter of years; a result that would be hard to achieve with a centralised top-down approach. The study identified three types of CMITs – Education, Industry and Residential – which could be similar or different depending on the stage of social open innovation. Furthermore, this paper discusses the main difficulties social entrepreneurs encounter as a part of the open social innovation process, as well as means to overcome them. In this respect, this study adds to the literature on fab labs by providing more comprehensive view of the challenges faced by fab labs (and makerspaces) founders, as well as suggestions of strategies enabling to ensure their long-term sustainability.

This chapter shows that there is a possibility of fostering an enabling and innovative multistakeholder partnership for creating sustainable impact and transformative change with local communities. It argues that the collaborative efforts among district administration, educational institutions and civil society groups in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship can play an extremely important role in livelihood security and empowerment of marginalized sections. The chapter outlines the transformation of a marginalized and underdeveloped district of India. It presents a background of the district with a focus on farmers’ distress and discusses the mode of organization of elites and marginalized peoples under welfare and neoliberal regimes. The chapter also outlines the impact that state–university engagement on the communities. The neoliberal regime made the elite-based cooperatives ineffective, as they came under mismanagement and overexploitation by those in power. Neoliberal reform introduced a new vulnerability among Indian farmers, especially in certain states, such as Maharashtra.

This study seeks to understand the nature and process of social innovation driven by mature social economy enterprises, and the innovative capability that supports it. The research examines enterprise capabilities by means of the institutional approach to social innovation and the Resource-Based View theory (RBV). Based on grounded theory, this research focuses on a single case, the creation of the Desjardins Environment Fund (DEF). Launched 25 years ago,1 DEF is the first mutual fund in North America to include extra-financial criteria in its evaluation of business environmental management practices (fund securities) for the information of individual investors. The findings of this empirical research show how a major cooperative bank can generate social innovation and how this entails organizational innovations. The findings also reveal how these innovations benefit from the strategic and process resources that the Desjardins Movement managed to develop while taking into account both its core business (as a bank) and its purpose (as a cooperative). This study shows that the innovative potential of the mature social economy enterprise should not be underestimated.

Reviews the social role of universities in the urban context Covers themes and models of major interest Explains how to ensure a legacy of grassroots initiatives

This work compares in a comparative way some advances in the promotion and management of Social Innovation adopted by four Latin American countries, including Panama, in order to generate more knowledge to promote the strengthening and design of new public policies in this ambit. Panama is in the incipient stage of Social Innovation management, compared to the other three countries analyzed: Colombia, Costa Rica and Chile. Among the structural elements addressed are: regulations, the degree of institutionality, mechanisms and incentives to promote social innovation projects and good institutionalized practices. Since 2014, Panama shows its interest and advances in the subject, in the academic and university academic sectors, which can take advantage of social innovation to obtain a greater impact in the country and promote a more inclusive social development. Colombia began efforts to promote Social Innovation in 2007, Chile and Costa Rica in 2014, as well as Panama. These three countries have a higher level of progress in the elements analyzed in their Social Innovation ecosystems than Panama, however, they do not have enough mechanisms to clearly identify the failures that prevent the strengthening of the culture of social innovation and, therefore, the establishment of much more effective public policies.

Presents different ways to design and develop social innovations in businesses and organizations Highlights elements of social innovation in higher education Examines social innovation in practice Features case studies from different regions around the world

In the business ethics literature, the growing interest in social entrepreneurship has remained limited to the assumption that pursuing a social mission will clash against the pursuit of associated economic achievements. This ignores recent developments in the social entrepreneurship literature which show that social missions and economic achievement can also have a mutually constitutive relation. We address this gap adopting the notion of shared value (SV) for an ethical inquiry of social entrepreneurship. Using a sensemaking framework, we assume that the emergence of SV propositions can be captured through the analysis of how social entrepreneurs make sense of events of change, selecting the journey of three exemplar cases for an inductive empirical inquiry. From our findings, we propose three themes for further examination. First, the ethical groundings of entrepreneurial SV are mostly shaped by idiosyncratic imperatives that inform both social mission and economic gain from the onset. Second, the ethical groundings of entrepreneurial SV will be likely operationalised as a filtering device, which allows for resilience as well as potentially detrimental blind spots. And third, the ethical groundings of entrepreneurial SV are expressed through ongoing transparency. Whilst there are agendas, these are not necessarily hidden but instead are likely put on show for the scrutiny of markets and communities. We hope that this evidence can add more light to our still modest understanding of the ethical groundings of social entrepreneurship.

Afin de réfléchir à la relation dans le soin et son apprentissage, dix-sept personnes sont sollicitées pour participer à une journée de codesign. Cette méthodologie consiste, par une succession d’exercices protocolisés, à favoriser la créativité du groupe via une démarche d’intelligence collective. L’article vise à réfléchir aux conditions par lesquelles une telle méthodologie peut devenir une ressource capacitante pour penser l’apprentissage de l’éthique. Le présent travail souligne notamment la place centrale de l’affectivité dans la construction du climat d’innovation et dans le mécanisme de la pensée divergente. L’article ouvre in fine de nouveaux questionnements sur l’articulation des exercices, l’affectivité, le rôle de l’animateur ou encore celui de l’usager. Les perspectives de recherches invitent à un décloisonnement disciplinaire.

Qu’est ce que l’intelligence collective ? Comment mettre en œuvre l’intelligence collective dans les équipes et les pratiques quotidiennes ? Quelles gouvernances favorisent l\'intelligence collective ? Comment développer des manières de travailler collaboratives ? Vous saurez bientôt répondre à toutes ces questions, en utilisant les 66 outils de ce livre indispensable pour réussir la mise en place de l\'intelligence collective dans votre équipe ou votre entreprise.

Cet ouvrage collectif a comme objectif de mettre en lumière le travail mené par les personnes et les organisations qui s’engagent à construire le futur en devenant des codéveloppeurs, acceptant par là même qu’elles ne possèdent qu’une partie des connaissances nécessaires aux projets qu’elles portent et bâtissent. Pour répondre à des besoins sociétaux de plus en plus complexes, de multiples institutions publiques et privées expérimentent ces nouveaux modes d’action inclusifs, qui consistent à travailler avec les parties prenantes des projets plutôt que de travailler pour celles-ci, afin d’ériger des biens communs et de s’assurer de leur usage. L’innovation collective : quand créer avec devient essentiel explore ces pratiques novatrices qui conjuguent audace, diversité et réalisme. Les projets dont il est question touchent à la ville, à la santé, au droit, au tourisme, au développement international, au commerce, à la technologie et à la recherche. Après avoir traité de l’innovation collective et de ses représentations, le livre aborde ses enjeux et ses échelles d’action, décortique certains dispositifs déployés pour créer avec et discute des rôles des acteurs engagés dans ces démarches. Ensuite, cinq expériences sont analysées par leurs participants, et les derniers textes portent sur les limites et les difficultés associées aux systèmes ouverts. Le présent ouvrage se veut une invitation à parcourir différentes facettes de ces innovations vivifiantes qui façonnent pas à pas l’avenir de la Terre.

Provides a guide to the development of innovative mindsets for new and seasoned researchers, students and other practitioners who collaborate with social science researchers Rather than focusing on how and why specific research methodologies are employed, the book increases meaningful research by developing transferable mindsets, across every stage of the research production Uniquely accessible by conveying key concepts via a combination of theoretical research, allegories and conversations emerging from the author’s unique perspective as a millennial academic researcher of lived experience and documentary filmmaker

This book illustrates how to design and implement co-creation, a powerful form of collective creativity that harnesses the potential of teams and can generate breakthrough insights. Skilled leaders and facilitators can utilize this approach to unleash the creative potential of their organizations. Drawing from years of applied research, the authors bring together insights from the fields of design and organizational development into an evocative and pragmatic "how-to" guidebook. Taking a human-centred rather than process oriented perspective, the book argues that experience design separates true co-creation from other forms of collective efforts and design thinking. Collective moments of creative insight emerge from the space between, an experience of flow and synchronicity from which new ideas spring forth. How to create and hold this space is the secret to the art of co-creation. Collective breakthroughs require stakeholders to undergo a journey from the world of their existing expertise into spaces of new potential. It requires leaders moving from a position of dominating space to holding the space for others, and developing core capacities such as empathy and awareness so that teams can engage each other co-creatively. This book uncovers the secrets of this journey, enabling process designers to develop more effective programs.