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This study explored how social housing communities can contribute to the transition to a circular economy (CE) in cities. The CE promotes ways for rethinking and reshaping current practices of producing and consuming to enhance resource efficiency while satisfying our needs to enable us to prosper sustainably. Resource efficiency in cities relies on production and consumption patterns that are connected to people behaviours. Up to now, the CE has mainly concentrated on different levels of technological system innovations with limited attention to social practices and behavioural change. On the other side, communities and groups of interest show playing a crucial role in the promotion of sustainable practices through initiatives of social innovation (SI). Through case study analysis and comparison, the project investigated contemporary SI initiatives implemented by urban communities and groups of interest aiming at promoting alternative production-consumption practices. Seven types of SI for resource circularity have been identified. Based on this typology, the study defined potential opportunities, benefits and challenges for social housing communities. These findings also highlighted a complementary role that SI can play in the CE implementation in cities. Therefore, the project suggested the introduction of emerging SI concepts into the current CE approach to support development.

• Use Evolutionary Game to clarify the applicability of various resource allocations. • Expose the different key factors affecting the roles of resource allocations. • Breadth resource allocations have advantage when alliance environment is ambiguous. • Targeted resource allocations enhance the benefits if commercial prospects are clear. A lack of understanding regarding the roles and applicability of different resource allocations has become the underlying reason for the failure of resource efforts. Therefore, it is of important practical significance to examine the effects of different resource allocations and their impacts on the development of strategic alliances. Based on the development intentions of technological innovation cooperation and social capital accumulation, our study distinguished four patterns of resource allocation and viewed them as dynamic processes instead of unchanging decision results, using simulation from evolutionary game theory to explore the roles and applicability of various resource allocations by exposing their stability under different constraint situations. Our results indicate that, first, the randomly-oriented resource allocation has the highest probability of being unstable, while the knowledge-embedded resource allocation has the lowest probability. Second, randomly-oriented resource allocation can lead an alliance to become a pure technology or social alliance; relationship-oriented resource allocation is sensitive to opportunistic behavior, but more favorable to innovation diffusion; cooperation-oriented resource allocation is mainly affected by resource cost, and more suitable for firms with strong innovation intentions; and knowledge-embedded resource allocation is conducive to reducing the uncertainty and enhancing the configuration success rates. Third, the breadth of the resource allocation increases the probability of successfully configuring resources, and the strategic decision to switch from broad resource allocation to a targeted one may increase the extraneous benefits of firms when the development prospects are clear.

The formation of social entrepreneurial intention (SEI) is a topic that attracts scholars’ attention recently. Previous studies in the literature mention the importance of personal background on the formation of such intentions (Mair and Noboa, in: Social entrepreneurship: How intentions to create a social venture are formed. In “social entrepreneurship” (pp. 121–135). Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2006); Dorado in Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship 11:1–24, 2006; Scheiber in VOLUNTAS International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. 27:1694–1717, 2016; Bacq and Alt in Journal of Business Venturing 33:333–350, 2018; Hockerts in Journal of Social Entrepreneurship 9:234–256, 2018). However, these studies often use samples from a limited number of countries and/or regions. The aim of this study is twofold. First, this study aims to examine whether the main antecedents of SEI (major hardship, radical change, encountering others’ hardship, and role model) offered in our previous study (Asarkaya and Keles Taysir in Nonprofit Management and Leadership 30:155–166, 2019) based on a sample from a specific country, is applicable within a global context and across different fields. Second, various functions of the main antecedents that lead to the formation of SEI are explored. The list of Ashoka fellows is utilized, and the personal details of 255 social entrepreneurs are analyzed. There are some common patterns in these narratives, supporting the potential influence of the main antecedents. In addition, the weights of these antecedents vary across different fields; and they have distinct functions through which SEI is formed.

Studies on public sector innovation often treat this type of innovation as something that emerges within public sector organizations. However, innovation theory argues that external sources of innovation are more fruitful sources of ideas. We claim that universities must be treated as a mandatory element in public sector innovation. This paper is aimed at clarifying the place of public sector innovation in the classification of innovations currently used in the literature. It also seeks to conceptualize an approach for future research on the topic. Our primary goal is to identify the role of different actors in the development of public sector innovation. We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of university involvement in public sector innovation. The paper consists of two parts. The first defines concepts of innovation in general and public sector innovation viewed as a variation on social innovation. The second is dedicated to an analysis of the experience of Russian universities in enhancing collaboration between actors in the public innovation system.

The growing presence of new players – beside those belonging to the institutional and third sectors – committed to supporting social and environmental causes through innovative approaches and tools leads to the profile of a for-profit enterprise increasingly committed to the pursuit of social goals. In the paper, the authors focus their attention on the existence of relationships between innovation and a company's social role in order to assess how innovation affects the social conduct of profit-making enterprises and to determine the birth of a new "hybrid" business model. In order to achieve this goal, research was carried out on a sample of 4,000 Italian Small and Medium-sized Enterprises that claim to operate according to a corporate social commitment, in order to investigate the existence of a relationship between innovative behavior and social and business purposes of companies having different Corporate Social Innovation policies. The data were analyzed using the conditional inference tree, a non-parametric class of tree regression model, which overcomes different regression problems involving ordinal and nominal variables. The results achieved make it possible to fill some gaps in the existing literature, to detect a relationship between technological and social commitment in a company and to open a debate on future research developments.

University intellectual property policies, and the accompanying strategies for incubation of IP via licensing and spin outs, have not received much analysis from academic lawyers. Moreover, despite the success of universities in the UK at generating income from IP, not much is known about how transferable this success is when considered in the light of a rapidly growing middle-income developing economy such as Mexico’s. In this article we analyse critically some of the key tenets of IP policies at universities in the UK to identify what the key legal principles underpinning university innovation are. We further consider the potential application of these principles in Mexico, where so far only a limited number of universities have developed IP policies and strategies in line with the incubator model. We explain how universities in Mexico could implement these research findings in their own IP policies. We further note that the mere provision of an IP policy is not a panacea – on its own it is insufficient for ensuring technology transfer and it may even encourage unnecessary patenting. Further investment in infrastructure and in establishing a culture of incubation and entrepreneurship is also required.

The recent surge of investment in Civic Technologies represents a unique opportunity to realize the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for improving democratic participation. In this review, we study what technologies are proposed and evaluated in the academic literature for such goal. We focus our exploration on how civic technology is used in the collaborative creation of solutions for social issues and innovations for public services (i.e., social innovation). Our goal is to provide researchers, designers, and practitioners a starting point to understand both the academic state of the art and the existing opportunities for ICT in a democracy.

Technological innovation is the new backbone for companies. Exploiting and exploring new knowledge increase the chance of survival in the current dynamic market. Alongside, there are countries were be an innovative need to face up social and political challenges. This has transformed their economy, spreading an entrepreneurial mindset mingled with the willing to help a local community. This phenomenon is called social entrepreneurship which is leveraging new economies and building wealth, environmental system. In this vein, the present research seeks to offer qualitative research on 142 social entrepreneurs in an emerging country. The scope is to analyse if social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial characteristics, and entrepreneurial ecosystem influence innovation. As emerged, technological innovation is affected by the first two factors but the entrepreneurial ecosystem is still not supportive. New, several activities should be organised by the government to assist entrepreneurs, whereas, the entrepreneurs are socially motivated to build up his enterprise.

The United States wastes approximately 40% of its food supply. This article will examine the implications of this waste for food insecurity and climate change. It will also explore how the law and social entrepreneurship can be used to confront this public health challenge.

Innovation is perhaps the buzzword in local economic development policy. Associated narrowly with neoliberal ideas, conventional notions of innovation—like its capitalocentric counterparts, enterprise and entrepreneurialism—may promise higher productivity, global competitiveness and technological progress but do not fundamentally change the ‘rules of the game’. In contrast, an emerging field reimagines social innovation as disruptive change in social relations and institutional configurations. This article explores the conceptual and political differences within this pre‐paradigmatic field, and argues for a more transformative understanding of social innovation. Building on the work of David Graeber, I mobilize the novel constructs of ‘play’ and ‘games’ to advance our understanding of the contradictory process of institutionalizing social innovation for urban transformation. This is illustrated through a case study of Liverpool, where diverse approaches to innovation are employed in attempts to resolve longstanding socio‐economic problems. Dominant market‐ and state‐led economic development policies—likened to a ‘regeneration game’—are contrasted with more experimental, creative, democratic and potentially more effective forms of social innovation, seeking urban change through playing with the rules of the game. I conclude by considering how the play–game dialectic illuminates and reframes the way transformative social innovation might be cultivated by urban policy, the contradictions this entails, and possible ways forward.

Some of the most important resources are intangible, such as knowledge and access to networks. In the developing world, technology can facilitate these resources and address basic human needs in a variety of ways: from provision of farmer training and cloud-controlled clean water systems to health information and mobile money services. Some of these services expand access to resources in ways that particularly benefit women. In environments where women are disadvantaged socially and economically, information and communications technologies (ICT) can enable women to access valuable information, consider a broader range of business opportunities, access wider markets, partake in educational programs, and share experiences with and gain mentorship from other women. However, there are large gender gaps in the access to technology, particularly in rural areas. To begin, I briefly discuss the role of technology in development, and consider the extent and significance of technology gender gaps. Next, I review key barriers to reducing these gaps, and discuss the concept of social innovation as it applies to technology interventions. Examples from five social innovations in India — a country with large technology gender gaps — illustrate the range of possibilities for innovative access to and use of ICT for diverse target groups. I conclude with some suggestions for further improvement in this area.

The rapid pace of technological developments played a key role in the previous industrial revolutions. However, the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) and its embedded technology diffusion progress is expected to grow exponentially in terms of technical change and socioeconomic impact. Therefore, coping with such transformation require a holistic approach that encompasses innovative and sustainable system solutions and not just technological ones. In this article, we propose a framework that can facilitate the interaction between technological and social innovation to continuously come up with proactive, and hence timely, sustainable strategies. These strategies can leverage economic rewards, enrich society at large, and protect the environment. The new forthcoming opportunities that will be generated through the next industrial wave are gigantic at all levels. However, the readiness for such revolutionary conversion require coupling the forces of technological innovation and social innovation under the sustainability umbrella.

Notre questionnement porte sur le profond décalage entre l'évolution de la pensée économique et les pratiques politiques issues de la décentralisation. Notre hypothèse met de l’avant que les logiques politiques mobilisées dans le cadre de ces réformes ne permettent pas d’accompagner le tournant territorial de l’économie (Pecqueur, 2006; Landel et Pecqueur, 2016). La difficulté des collectivités locales à prendre en compte et à accompagner l’innovation sociale témoigne de ces décalages. Pourtant, sous l’impulsion de l’État, de nouvelles formes de coordination s’affirment, parmi lesquelles on peut citer les pôles territoriaux de coopération économique (PTCE). Ils méritent d’être observés au regard de leur capacité à accompagner de nouvelles formes de développement territorial.

L’innovation sociale est devenue, en quelques années, un concept tellement galvaudé qu’il entretient une large confusion dans les débats. Utilisé d’abord en Amérique du Nord [1], il s’est généralisé avec l’arrivée, dans les années 90, de la notion anglo-saxonne d’« entrepreneurs sociaux ». Introduit ensuite par des travaux initiés par la Communauté européenne [2], il est entré dans la loi française du 31 juillet 2014 relative à l’économie sociale et solidaire (ESS). L’objet de notre article n’est pas de dresser un inventaire des différentes acceptions de ce concept, mais plutôt de chercher, d’une part, à asseoir sa définition sur des fondements théoriques et, d’autre part, à tirer les conséquences pragmatiques de ce positionnement. Nous commencerons par l’innovation technologique, car c’est d’elle qu’il est question lorsque l’on évoque l’innovation sans donner d’autres précisions. Nous verrons cependant que cette définition masque des sous-entendus qui nous serviront pour définir l’innovation sociale. Cette définition peut déboucher sur deux approches : l’une collaborative, l’autre coopérative. Il importe de le préciser, car elles n’ont pas les mêmes implications en termes de projets politiques. Nous montrerons que la question de la propriété est au centre de ce qui les différencie. Un tableau de synthèse de ce raisonnement est présenté en annexe.

Social innovation is related to new products, services, and models aiming to improve human well-being and create social relationships and collaborations. The business model innovation (BMI) context can foster social innovation and can be applied in social innovation projects and initiatives. What is important for social BMI is the social mission, which needs to be defined in order to be able to move forward with the strategy, the value proposition, and the best practices of the business. Based on the existing social innovation literature and case studies, this paper proposes an “ecosystem” approach that can provide an integrated framework for social business models. This approach adopts the quadruple/quintuple helix innovation models which are able to promote social innovation, enabling a locus-centric and triple-bottom-line-centric entrepreneurial process of knowledge discovery and exploitation. Such a framework may help to study the role, nature, and dynamics of social co-opetitive fractal ecosystems, given emphasis on civil society, political structures, environment, and sustainability. In addition, the social innovation case studies presented in this paper highlight that targeted open innovation is a key element for social BMI.

Cet article analyse l’apport d’une démarche participative de construction d’un tableau de bord à la structuration d’une innovation sociale, un réseau coopératif. Comment l’enrôlement des membres dans la construction collaborative d’un outil de gestion accroît-il leur implication et institutionnalise-t-il leurs relations, structurant par là même leur réseau? La première partie de cet article expose sa problématique : le processus d’émergence des réseaux et les difficultés inhérentes en termes de pilotage et d’animation. La deuxième partie décrit la méthode d’accompagnement participative au pilotage des réseaux (MAPP), conçue par le Centre de recherche public Henri Tudor dans le cadre d’une recherche-action pour répondre à cet enjeu spécifique de pilotage des réseaux. Dans une troisième partie, les auteures présentent leur cadre théorique, qu’elles mobilisent dans l’étude d’un cas, l’impact de MAPP sur un réseau associatif émergent.

Understanding the criteria for the formation and development of social innovation ecosystems is crucial to establish appropriate strategies for their creation, maintenance and expansion. In this regard, strategies should be focused on social development actions, mainly supported by governments and members of the society. Silva, Sá and Spinosa (2019) reinforce that the interaction between government, industry and academia, coined in the literature as Triple Helix, by Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000), has been increasingly recognized for driving the transformation of scientific and technological results into economic results. According to a study by Schaffers et. al (2012), the progress towards the understanding of the intersection between urban economy, innovation networks, technology platforms, services and their applications, collective intelligence and innovation theories themselves is one of the challenges for innovation. This understanding can help scholars, governments and professionals to explore new directions and produce knowledge and solutions to make cities smarter. This study aimed to carry on a previous study by Nespolo and Fachinelli (2017) as well as build and validate a scale to measure the perception of social innovation ecosystems.

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.

L’innovation sociale est de plus en plus reconnue comme un moteur de transformation et une solution aux problèmes complexes tels que les inégalités sociales, l’accès aux soins de santé, les besoins en pratiques de pointe psychosociales, les effets des évolutions démographiques et de l’employabilité ou encore les conséquences des changements climatiques sur les humains. Des acteurs de tous les milieux souhaitent contribuer à trouver des solutions à ces enjeux sociaux pressants grâce au processus d’innovation sociale (IS) et de transfert de connaissances scientifiques (TC). L’innovation sociale a toujours existé dans nos sociétés, mais de nouveaux paramètres et facteurs inspirent sa mise en pratique. S’il y a un certain consensus quant à la finalité de l’innovation sociale et du transfert de connaissances, soit le bien-être des collectivités, les façons d’y parvenir varient selon les contextes sociaux sous-jacents. Il existe plusieurs façons de faire émerger l’innovation et nous pensons que le transfert de connaissances scientifiques constitue à cet égard un levier de choix. Dans cet article, nous définirons d’abord ce que nous entendons par innovation sociale et transfert de connaissances. Ensuite, nous présenterons une partie des acteurs de l’écosystème québécois. Finalement, la cocréation/ coproduction sera explorée comme facteur d’influence de l’innovation sociale et du transfert de connaissances grâce aux résultats d’une revue systématique effectuée sur le sujet.