SI Business Case Studies

Background

Business case studies will provide SIMPACT with an important means of (I) understanding the economic underpinnings and (II) of grounding design thinking by analysing the business models which inform social innovation. Social enterprises, co-operatives and socially-driven businesses all re-define market principles, but it is less clear how their underlying business models engage with finance, governance, work organisation, employment and other factors. This will contribute to SIMPACT's impact on stimulating and informing the design of future social innovations.

Objectives

The identified and documented business cases shall serve as basis for the development of Go to WP4stronger social innovation concepts to identify the criticalities and opportunities for scaling. Moreover, they will serve for the selection of social innovation Go to WP6policy cases, provide insights for the development of Go to WP5social innovation indicators and be fed into Go to SI Behaviour ScenariosWP2.

Methodology

Based on the Go to Meta-Analysismeta-analysis, POLIMI in cooperation with TUDO will identify 30 social innovation business cases as examples of existing services. The data collection will focus on creative communities, social entrepreneurship and Digital Social Innovation (DSI) at the different development stages of the social innovation lifecycle. Based on the framework developed the single cases will be described along the following dimensions:

  • 1 problem being addressed
  • 1 framework (environment in which the case is embedded in)
  • 1 partners (i.e. main actors involved, their role and gender-related differences)
  • 1 idea, motivation and core solutions
  • 1 extended description of the case including the underlying business and organisational model
  • 1 its social and economic impact

Basic Information

Latest News

Comparative Report on Social Innovation across Europe

August 22, 2015

SIMPACT publishes its «Comparative Report on Social Innovation across Europe», which summarises the findings of 60 social innovation cases for which Business Case Studies and Social Innovation Biographies were conducted.

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Results Meta-Analysis

August 1, 2015

SIMPACT publishes the findings on meta-component, meta-objectives and meta-princripples across distinct welfare regimes derived from the meta-analysis of 94 social innovation cases collected from existing databases.

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Glossary

  • 1

    Business Case Studies

    A descriptive, exploratory or explanatory analysis of a case (e.g. business) to explore causation in order to identify underlying principles, objectives and components.