From technological to social innovation – the changing role of principal investigators within entrepreneurial ecosystems

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 739-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Carl

PurposeBy taking a micro-level perspective, this paper aims to examine the influence of the ongoing paradigm shift from technological to social innovation on principal investigators (PIs) and thereby links the two emerging research fields of entrepreneurial ecosystems and social innovation. The purpose of this paper is to build the basis for future empirical analyses.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a conceptual paper and therefore focuses on theoretical considerations. Taking a quadruple helix approach, PIs are outlined as central actors of entrepreneurial ecosystems and transformative agents of the innovation process.FindingsPIs can proactively shape the innovation process and thus the shift from technological to social innovation, through various channels. They can affect all other actors of the quadruple helix, e.g. by exerting influence on the process of scientific change, on the public opinion and/or on the industry partners. Further, the paradigm shift might change the universities' role in the quadruple helix, substantiating their importance in the process of social change.Practical implicationsAs PIs are influencing all other actors of the quadruple helix, they are central actors of entrepreneurial ecosystems and thus crucial players in the innovation process. Hence, they need to be supported in fulfilling their role of transformative agents, accelerating and shaping the paradigm shift from technological to social innovation. Universities should therefore reconsider their missions and vision as well as their role within the society.Originality/valueThis paper considers the influence of an ongoing paradigm shift from technological to social innovation on entrepreneurial ecosystems. This work focuses especially on the PIs' role as transformative agents. Therefore, it builds a bridge from entrepreneurial ecosystems to social innovation and thus contributes to both research fields. Moreover, the paper shows the great potential of PIs to influence and shape social innovation.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Benavides-Salazar ◽  
Cristina Iturrioz-Landart ◽  
Cristina Aragón-Amonarriz ◽  
Asunción Ibañez-Romero

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how entrepreneurial families (EFs) influence the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) by using the family social capital (FSC) approach. Design/methodology/approach For this paper, the authors analyzed the Manizales EE as a case study. The authors used a variety of data collection procedures, including in-depth interviews with 26 entrepreneurs and mentors. Findings The authors established how EFs affect EE development, identifying how the FSC bridging mechanisms impact the EE’s social and cultural attributes, boosting entrepreneurial dynamics. Originality/value The results indicated the relevance of EFs’ embeddedness and the degree of the FSC institutionalization in promoting of entrepreneurship within the EEs.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lwando Mdleleni

Purpose This paper aims to explore the role of university in promoting, generating and sustaining social innovation (SI). It aimed to understand how higher education institutions have extended their contribution beyond the traditional function of teaching and research to perform in socio-economic problem-solving. It looks at the kinds of contributions which universities potentially make to SI processes, and the effects that this has on the direction and magnitude of SI, and by implication social development. This was done by drawing lessons from a SI project that the University of the Western Cape has been involved in, i.e. Zenzeleni Networks Project. Design/methodology/approach To address the research question with this framework, the author adopted an exploratory research design using a case study. This research is qualitative, exploratory and descriptive, based on a case study built with secondary data. Findings This paper submits that universities can potentially function as key role players in promoting SI initiatives and fostering social transformations. Universities contribute with different kinds of resources and inputs to foster new SI ideas. Originality/value The paper suggests that socially innovative university projects may contribute to community social sustainability maintaining social cohesion by increasing social capital and providing resources for the empowerment of the marginalised communities. In so doing, they contribute to overcome social exclusion and promote more sustainable forms of development at community level. More research is needed on how universities can build community networks with local community partners, who can use the insights of academic research to replicate interventions and move to scale.


Koedoe ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
R.F. Terblanche ◽  
H. Van Hamburg

The relevance and integration of scientific knowledge to conservation management of the locally popular and highly endemic butterfly genus Chrysoritis are investigated within the research fields of taxonomy and biogeography. The butterfly genus Chrysoritis contains at least 41 species endemic to South Africa. The taxonomy of Chrysoritis has reached a state where revisions could easily result in a plethora of names between “lumping and splitting”. In practice, the state of the taxonomy of these butterflies on species level may alter their conservation priority. The two most species rich species groups in Chrysoritis have different centres of endemism, however, a butterfly atlas becomes a necessity to reveal more about their biogeography. There is an absence of butterfly species lists in many of our National Parks and Nature Reserves. Legislation should facilitate rather than limit the valuable role of the amateur lepidopterist to add distribution records. In turn, the amateur lepidopterists should adapt and make an effort to explore unknown localities, apart from monitoring butterflies at their well-known localities. The red listing of localised butterflies in South Africa, including a number of Chrysoritis species, is in need of an urgent review in the light of the most recent IUCN categories. A species such as Chrysoritis dicksoni should be protected by law - but at its known localities. The scenario that real conservation action is only needed if the last known locality of a butterfly is threatened, should be abolished. A paradigm shift to conserve the metapopulations of the highly endemic Chrysoritis genus and not merely a few of its species as items that appear on lists, seems necessary.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (9) ◽  
pp. 1088-1116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ki-Soon Han ◽  
Pooja Garg

Purpose This paper aims to explore the role of workplace democracy in generating psychological capital, which is an inevitable paradigm for the contemporary organizations. The study also provides a conceptual framework which connotes the nexus between the two constructs. Design/methodology/approach The study is qualitative in nature and uses content analysis to identify the determinants of workplace democracy and psychological capital. Furthermore, the study used SPSS macro, i.e. PROCESS, a computational tool for calculating inter-coder reliability by using KALPHA, i.e. Krippendorff’s alpha reliability estimate (Hayes, 2013; Krippendorff, 2011). Findings The present study adds to the literature by signaling the dire need for building democratic workplaces and offers significant insights for the management and human resource practitioners to cultivate workplace democracy to build their employees’ psychological strengths, which in turn will result in enhanced organizational outcomes. Originality/value The present study brings attention toward the necessity for a shift in the generic organizational strategies and instigate organizations to nurture a democratic setup for developing employees’ psychological capital.


2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 1399-1414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martine Vézina ◽  
Majdi Ben Selma ◽  
Marie Claire Malo

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the organising of social innovation in a large market-based social enterprises from the perspective of dynamic capabilities and social transformation.Design/methodology/approachThis paper analyses the process by which Desjardins Group launched the Desjardins Environment Fund as the first investment fund in North America to integrate environmental screening. It uses longitudinal single case analysis and a theoretical framework based on Teece’s three dynamic capabilities.FindingsResults show that dynamic capabilities can be conceived as stages in the process of social innovation. Sensing refers to the capability to identify a societal demand for social transformation. Seizing capability is about shaping societal demand into a commercial offer. Reconfiguring concerns organisational innovation to integrate actual and new knowledge through innovative routines. Microprocesses of both path dependency and path building are in action at each of the three stages.Practical implicationsThis paper shows that managing dynamic capabilities is central to social innovation in the context of a large social business and provides genuine managerial input via an analysis of the microprocesses at work in the social innovation process.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the operationalization of Teece’s dynamic capabilities model. In mobilising a framework in the field of management of innovation, it contributes to the understanding of the process of social innovation and develops the organisational mechanism for multiscalarity of social innovation as a condition for social transformation.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Aparecida da Costa Mineiro ◽  
Rita de Cássia Arantes ◽  
Kelly Carvalho Vieira ◽  
Cleber Carvalho Castro ◽  
Eduardo Gomes Carvalho ◽  
...  

Purpose This study aims to analyze the practices and relationships of companies established in Science and Technology Parks (STPs) as drivers of the quadruple and quintuple helix (QQH) and the determinants for aligning with the future vision of STPs. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a survey of companies associated with consolidated STPs and used the Structural Equation Model technique to predict such relationships. Findings The results showed a positive relationship between the QQH and the Future Vision of STPs, in addition to the relevance of collectives as representatives of the quadruple helix (QH). Research limitations/implications Collectives are a recent phenomenon and require longitudinal studies on their performance in innovation environments. Practical implications Companies that are part of collectives are the actors of the QH. Social implications The role of collectives in aligning with the future vision of STPs should be considered. Collectives reflect people’s vision and can help STPs from being a closed environment and expand their performance, with a key role in connecting innovation environments. The authors found that collectives are promising in practices related to sustainability, thus contributing to STPs with their ability to mobilize the ecosystem. Originality/value The research emphasizes the role of companies as agents of QQH in innovation environments, strengthening the increasing and distinct role of collectives in their relationships with STPs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Hemmungs Wirtén

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show how the documentation movement associated with the utopian thinkers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine relied on patent offices as well as the documents most closely associated with this institutional setting – the patents themselves – as central to the formation of the document category. The main argument is that patents not only were subjected to and helped construct, but also in fact engineered the development of technoscientific order during 1895–1937. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on an interdisciplinary approach to intellectual property, document theory and insights from media archeology. Focused on the historical period 1895–1937, this study allows for an analysis that encapsulates and accounts for change in a number of comparative areas, moving from bibliography to documentation and from scientific to technoscientific order. Primary sources include Paul Otlet’s own writings, relevant contemporary sources from the French documentation movement and the Congrès Mondial de la documentation universelle in 1937. Findings By understanding patent offices and patents as main drivers behind those processes of sorting and classification that constitute technoscientific order, this explorative paper provides a new analytical framework for the study of intellectual property in relation to the history of information and documentation. It argues that the idea of the document may serve to rethink the role of the patent in technoscience, offering suggestions for new and underexplored venues of research in the nexus of several overlapping research fields, from law to information studies. Originality/value Debates over the legitimacy and rationale of intellectual property have raged for many years without signs of abating. Universities, research centers, policy makers, editors and scholars, research funders, governments, libraries and archives all have things to say on the legitimacy of the patent system, its relation to innovation and the appropriate role of intellectual property in research and science, milieus that are of central importance in the knowledge-based economy. The value of this paper lies in proposing a new way to approach patents that could show a way out of the current analytical gridlock of either/or that for many years has earmarked the “openness-enclosure” dichotomy. The combination of intellectual property scholarship and documentation theory provides important new insight into the historical networks and processes by which patents and documents have consolidated and converged during the twentieth century.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 218-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Medianeira Bolzan ◽  
Claudia Cristina Bitencourt ◽  
Bibiana Volkmer Martins

Purpose Social innovation is a recent theme, and the practices related to this area are characterized by punctual actions and projects restricted by time and space that make it difficult to develop strategies that can be sustained in this field. Therefore, one point that deserves to be highlighted in studies on social innovation is a matter of scalability. This paper aims to deal with a bibliometry whose objective was to map the existing studies about scalability of social innovation carried out in the Capes and EBSCOHost portals. Design/methodology/approach This paper deals with a bibliometry. The topic researched in this bibliometry is scalability of social innovation. The databases chosen for this research were Portal Periódico Capes and EBSCOHost because they are the leading providers of search databases. Findings A total of 42 papers were considered, distributed between 2002 and 2017. The analysis criteria for the study were origin (composed by year, author, country of origin, periodical and impact factor), focus of the investigations, justification, method and main techniques of research, contributions and theoretical advances and challenges and paths. Originality/value Among the main results found, one of them is that scalability is a topic that began to be researched recently, so that the USA and Brazil lead the research. Most of the studies focused on the scalability process and justified the importance of studies on the subject as a way to explore the potential of expanding the social impacts of a social innovation. Several studies have emphasized the role of networks as being quite positive for the scalability process and have been concerned with identifying factors that contribute to the scalability process. The challenge that most stood out among the papers was the financial sustainability of a social innovation. At the end, a research agenda was proposed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1070 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonius Schröder ◽  
Daniel Krüger

Based on the results of the EU funded Social Innovation – Driving Force of Social Change (SI-DRIVE) project the major challenges and needs of education and lifelong learning worldwide are revealed, focusing on solutions via new educational practices delivered by social innovations and embedding civil society. Against this background, a more learner-oriented approach instead of institutional improvements is presented. Based on the results of SI-DRIVE’s global mapping of more than 200 innovative education initiatives and 18 in-depth case studies, the article spotlights the relevant settings and success factors of social innovations in education, leading to a system related typology of social innovation. New ways of repairing, modernising and transforming education as well as separated approaches are illustrated showing the underdeveloped, unexploited and unrecognised potential of this kind of innovation. For setting up a more innovation friendly environment, it is particularly important to realise a paradigm shift towards a learner perspective and rationality. More leeway and new governance structures for integrating and fostering social innovations and unfolding the potential of all societal sectors for enhancing education are necessary. This especially includes a more active and new role of universities in enabling, exchanging, moderating and researching social innovation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 40-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Martens

Purpose – This study aims to examine the roles of stories in the innovation process. Design/methodology/approach – An integrative literature review was used to identify and analyze studies that examined stories of innovation in various organizational settings. The conceptual framework of the review was based on three perspectives of organizational culture: integration, differentiation, and fragmentation. Findings – A typology of the roles of stories of innovation was synthesized from a review of the literature. The major roles in the typology included fostering a culture of innovation, managing product planning and project teams, facilitating idea generation and problem solving, and analyzing failed innovations. These roles were congruent with multiple perspective of organizational culture, including integration, differentiation, and fragmentation. Research limitations/implications – Additional research should be conducted to further explore and confirm the study's exploratory typology as a possible extension to the role of organizational narrative in the process of innovation. Practical implications – The study's conceptual typology can presently serve as a useful learning tool for HRD practitioners to facilitate an organization's understanding of the innovation process. Originality/value – The study presents a new approach to analyzing the roles of stories in innovation with perspectives of organizational culture and provides an initial base for further research that might extend understanding of the types of roles narratives play in innovation.


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