Social Entrepreneurship: The Role of Innovation for the Performance of Social Entrepreneurial Initiatives Social Entrepreneurship Research Meeting Helsinki Hanna Duvnäs Åbo Akademi University School of Business and Economics 1

2 Contents  The Role of Innovation within Social Entrepreneurship (SE)  Purpose  Research Questions 1 & 2  Quantitative Study  Results and Conclusions of the Quantitative Study  Research Question 3  Multiple Case Study  Contributions of the Case Study

The Role of Innovation within Social Entrepreneurship (SE)  Innovation a part of SE(see e.g. Dees, 1998; Austin et al., 2006).  Can make it economically sustainable for social entrepreneurial initiatives to focus on social issues, including environmental issues (see Mair, Robinson, & Hockerts, 2006 cited in Neck et al., 2009; Neck et al., 2009), that have not attracted businesses (see Seelos & Mair, 2005).  The reason for this is that innovations can imply cost effective solutions or innovative funding solutions and thereby enable low dependency or independency on external funding (see Dees, 1998; Seelos & Mair, 2005).  Innovation can be considered an important element within SE, BUT further research on innovations within SE needed!! 3

Purpose To find out which innovations it would be worth developing and promoting when it comes to social entrepreneurship 4

Research Questions 1 & 2  What is the impact of basing the activity centrally on one or a few novelties on the competitive advantage from a resource based perspective when it comes to activities registered as social enterprises in Finland?  What is the impact of basing the activity centrally on one or a few novelties on the expected profit of activities registered as social enterprises in Finland? 5

Quantitative Study  Based on data on activities registered as social enterprises in Finland (sosiaalisia yrityksiä)  Data collected through two questionnnaires sent to the enterprises  Main methods of analysis: Hierachical multiple regression analysis, and logistics regression analysis 6

Quantitative Study (continued)  Core innovations  sustained competitive advantage (from a resource-based perspective)  Core innovations  expected profit  Controlling for: age of the firm, industry, share of disabled employees(including long- term unemployed), size of the firm, and sustained competitive advantage  Hypothesis: Positive relations 7

Results and Conclusions of the Quantitative Study  Negative relation, Core innovations- Sustained competitive advantage  No relation, Core innovations- expected profit  Suggest: – No focus on core innovations – Innovating for other reasons – New measures for measuring the success of innovations? 8

Research Question 3 What different kinds of functions can core innovations within social entrepreneurship have? 9

Multiple Case Study  Enterprises registered as social enterprises and Finnish social entrepreneurial initiatives not registered as social enterprises in Finland  Data mainly from semi-structured interviews  Categorizations by Alvord et al., (2004) and Zahra et al. (2009) starting points 10

Contributions of the Case Study  Map the function of innovations within social entrepreneurship  Innovations worth developing and promoting by policy makers, practitioners, potential practitioners and other actors. 11

Thank you for your attention! Thank you for your attention! 12