How social tech ventures develop to deliver their mission.

社会科技企业如何发展以实现其使命。

• 批准号: ES/W012219/1
• 负责人: Christian Hampel
• 金额: $ 30.92万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FW012219%2F1
• 关键词: How; social; tech; ventures; develop

The world is facing many social problems. Social entrepreneurship offers the promise to be an important tool in the fight against them. Social tech ventures, which leverage technology and trade commercially to address social problems, are particularly promising in this regard: by offering technologically-mediated solutions to social problems, they have the potential to help a larger number of beneficiaries at lower costs than their non-tech counterparts.Existing research about social entrepreneurship has shown that social ventures need to carefully combine the two aspects that are at the core of their hybrid nature: i.e., their social and commercial elements. In addition, research has found important ways by which social ventures can deal with this challenge, such as by integrating these two elements in the organization or segregating them in different parts of it.Despite its strong merits in recent years, this literature overlooks how the distinct type of social tech ventures develop to deliver their mission at scale. First, most research on social ventures is based on non-tech ventures and does not explore the distinct dynamics that social tech ventures face. In turn, the small number of studies on social tech ventures have not explored how these ventures develop over time to achieve their mission at scale. As a result, we lack an understanding of how social tech ventures develop and how they overcome the challenges that they face. Second, research on social ventures has to date overlooked the important question of how social tech ventures evolve to achieve scale. Whereas this is a major objective for the world of social innovation practice, research has to date not examined systematically what process social tech ventures can employ to scale themselves and the social impact that they create for beneficiaries. Third, research on commercial ventures has started to explore how new ventures can pivot when their original approach fails but we lack research about how social ventures can pivot. This is a formidable challenge given that pivoting for social (tech) ventures likely not only involves overhauling their business models but also their approach for delivering impact.My project aims to push the frontier of social venture research by systematically analyzing how social tech ventures develop to deliver their mission at scale, such as by scaling, pivoting and mitigating mission drift. In this approach, I connect to an emerging body of research that is starting to theorize how new (non-social) ventures scale and pivot, as well as how social ventures respond to mission drift. These are all fundamental aspects of how social tech ventures develop in their pursuit of their mission, yet we lack research about the process by which they do so. I aim to bring to the surface the unwritten 'user manual' of developing social tech ventures at scale and uncovering the different paths that are more or less conductive for achieving this.A better understanding of how social tech ventures develop to deliver their mission at scale is critical to help them and the wider social innovation ecosystem to deliver the next generation of social innovations that can address major social problems in an extensive and widely-accessible manner. Building on successful collaborations with key organizations from the social innovation ecosystem, in the proposed study I will work with an existing research partner who is a leader in supporting and developing social tech ventures. I will rely on a novel toolkit of data collection methods, including founder journaling, extensive (offline and online) observation and interviews, to obtain longitudinal data. The research partner plays an active role in the study from its design to the final stage, when we will discuss implications for social innovation practice.

世界正面临着许多社会问题。社会企业家精神有望成为打击这些现象的重要工具。社会技术企业利用技术和商业贸易来解决社会问题，在这方面特别有前途：通过为社会问题提供以技术为媒介的解决方案，他们有可能以比非政府组织更低的成本帮助更多的受益者，现有的关于社会企业家精神的研究表明，社会企业需要仔细联合收割机的核心两个方面，它们的混合性质：也就是说，社会和商业元素。此外，研究发现了社会企业可以应对这一挑战的重要方法，例如通过将这两个元素整合到组织中或将它们隔离在组织的不同部分。尽管近年来有很强的优点，但这篇文献忽略了不同类型的社会技术企业如何发展以实现其使命。首先，大多数关于社会企业的研究都是基于非技术企业，并没有探索社会技术企业所面临的独特动态。反过来，关于社会科技企业的少量研究也没有探讨这些企业如何随着时间的推移而发展，以实现其规模化的使命。因此，我们缺乏对社交科技企业如何发展以及如何克服所面临挑战的理解。其次，迄今为止，对社会企业的研究忽视了社会技术企业如何发展以实现规模的重要问题。虽然这是社会创新实践的一个主要目标，但迄今为止，研究还没有系统地研究社会技术企业可以采用什么样的过程来扩大自己的规模，以及它们为受益者创造的社会影响。第三，对商业企业的研究已经开始探索新企业如何在原始方法失败时转向，但我们缺乏对社会企业如何转向的研究。这是一个艰巨的挑战，因为社交（科技）企业的转型可能不仅涉及彻底改变其商业模式，还涉及其产生影响的方法。我的项目旨在通过系统地分析社交科技企业如何发展以实现其大规模使命，例如通过扩展，转型和减轻使命漂移，来推动社交企业研究的前沿。在这种方法中，我连接到一个新兴的研究机构，开始理论化新的（非社会）企业如何规模和枢轴，以及社会企业如何应对使命漂移。这些都是社会科技企业如何在追求其使命的过程中发展的基本方面，但我们缺乏对它们这样做的过程的研究。更好地理解社会技术企业如何发展以实现其大规模的使命，对于帮助他们和更广泛的社会创新生态系统提供下一代社会创新至关重要，这些创新可以解决主要的社会问题，广泛和广泛的方式。在与社会创新生态系统中的关键组织成功合作的基础上，在拟议的研究中，我将与现有的研究合作伙伴合作，该合作伙伴是支持和开发社会技术企业的领导者。我将依靠一个新颖的数据收集方法工具包，包括创始人日志，广泛的（离线和在线）观察和采访，以获得纵向数据。研究合作伙伴在研究中发挥了积极的作用，从设计到最后阶段，当我们将讨论社会创新实践的影响。