Institutional change in the social innovation process: Evidence from an emerging context

Abstract

Institutional change has been identified as inherent to social innovation proposals, especially in developing contexts. However, it is still unclear how these changes occur in the social innovation process. Therefore, our study seeks to answer the following research question: How do attempts at institutional change occur in the social innovation process in an emerging context? We use the qualitative approach to investigate two Brazilian social innovation cases striving to change the institutional environment in which they operate. Our data reveals that institutional change may be necessary before the scalability stage of the social innovation process. We suggest that this finding is related to the developing context, which requires social entrepreneurs and their teams to break institutional barriers to expand their social innovation initiatives. We have also identified some mechanisms used for the attempts to institutional changes: competition with government organisations, influence in formulating laws, and support for the market growth and the entry of new participants.