Does Social Innovation Contribute to Sustainability? The Case of Italian Innovative Start-Ups

Michela Piccarozzi
Additional contact information
Michela Piccarozzi: Department of Economics, Engineering, Society and Business Organization, University of Tuscia, 01100 Viterbo, Italy

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 12, 1-28

Abstract: Start-ups, among other enterprises, play a major role in the development and/or commercialization of new technologies and the development of national economies, given that firms are the innovation locus for an entire society. In Italy, a recent regulatory intervention has focused on start-ups creating a framework where innovative start-ups are defined and regulated. Among innovative start-ups, those with a social vocation are of particular interest, since they are understudied in the literature. Indeed, the aim of this paper is twofold: to analyze the relationship between social innovation and sustainability in the latter businesses, and try to understand how sustainability could be fostered through them. Italian cases of innovative start-ups will be studied through content analysis applied to the Social Impact Assessment Document provided by firms. Results show that the Social Impact Assessment Document provided by innovative start-ups explicitly pays attention to social innovation and sustainability in different ways. However, the document does not show the link between social innovation and sustainability. Nonetheless, going through these documents, the link between social innovation and the three aspects of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) clearly emerge and therefore could be better managed.

Keywords: start-ups; social innovation; technology; sustainability; content analysis; social impact assessment document (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/12/2376/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/12/2376/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:12:p:2376-:d:123590

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().