How social tech ventures develop to deliver their mission.

世界正面临着许多社会问题。社会企业家精神提供了成为对抗他们的重要工具的希望。社会科技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：通过提供以技术为中介的社会问题解决方案，它们有潜力以比非科技企业更低的成本帮助更多的受益者。现有的关于社会创业的研究表明，社会企业需要仔细结合其混合本质的两个核心方面：即社会和商业元素。此外，研究发现了社会企业应对这一挑战的重要方法，例如通过将这两个要素整合到组织中或将它们分离在组织的不同部分。尽管近年来它具有强大的优点，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规模使命。首先，大多数关于社会创业的研究都是基于非科技创业，而没有探索社会科技创业所面临的不同动态。反过来，关于社交科技企业的少数研究也没有探索这些企业如何随着时间的推移发展，以实现其规模使命。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，对社交企业的研究忽略了一个重要问题，即社交科技企业如何演变以实现规模。尽管这是社会创新实践界的一个主要目标，但迄今为止，研究尚未系统地研究社会技术企业可以采用什么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，当新企业最初的方法失败时，它们如何转移，但我们缺乏关于社交企业如何转移的研究。这是一个艰巨的挑战，因为转向社交(科技)企业可能不仅涉及彻底改革它们的商业模式，还涉及它们传递影响力的方法。我的项目旨在通过系统分析社交科技企业如何发展以实现其规模使命，例如通过规模、旋转和缓解使命漂移，来推动社会风险研究的前沿。通过这种方法，我联系到一个新兴的研究机构，这些机构开始对新的(非社交)企业如何扩展和转移，以及社交企业如何应对使命漂移进行理论性研究。这些都是社交科技企业在追求使命的过程中如何发展的基本方面，但我们缺乏对它们实现这一目标的过程的研究。我的目标是将大规模发展社交科技企业的不成文的《用户手册》公之于众，并揭示或多或少有助于实现这一目标的不同途径。更好地理解社交科技企业是如何发展以实现其规模使命的，对于帮助它们和更广泛的社会创新生态系统交付下一代社交创新至关重要，这些创新能够以广泛和广泛的方式解决重大社会问题。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，我将与一位在支持和开发社会技术企业方面处于领先地位的现有研究合作伙伴合作。我将依靠一种新颖的数据收集方法工具包，包括创始人日记、广泛的(线下和在线)观察和采访，以获得纵向数据。研究伙伴在研究中发挥着积极的作用，从设计到最后阶段，我们将讨论对社会创新实践的启示。

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.