Exploring the impact of design thinking on social enterprise mission-aligned innovation

Catherine Docherty, Micaela Mazzei and Artur Steiner

Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 2024, vol. 36, issue 7-8, 1037-1053

Abstract: Despite the growing academic and policy interest in social enterprises, existing debates fail to answer how these organizations innovate without compromising their social mission. In particular, the mechanisms that assist social enterprises to innovate in line with their mission have been overlooked in the social enterprise literature. Through an empirical study of four social enterprises in Scotland, UK, we focus on Design Thinking and show that, through stimulating the engagement of diverse stakeholders, generating organizational knowledge and challenging traditional power dynamics, Design Thinking assists social enterprises in inducing mission-aligned innovation. Through the lens of Intellectual Capital theory, our article shows the applicability of Design Thinking in the field of social entrepreneurship, and draws implications for policy and practice.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08985626.2023.2286506 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:entreg:v:36:y:2024:i:7-8:p:1037-1053

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TEPN20

DOI: 10.1080/08985626.2023.2286506

Access Statistics for this article

Entrepreneurship & Regional Development is currently edited by Professor Alistair Anderson

More articles in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().