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Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , How social entrepreneurs search for knowledge to solve complex social problems – an empirically based model and typologyIn order to tackle today's grand challenges, we need to better understand how social entrepreneurs (SEs) search for knowledge to solve complex social problems. However, existing search models in social entrepreneurship lack an explicit focus on complexity. To address this gap, our explorative study adopts concepts from organizational search within open innovation as our theoretical lens to analyse 18 narrative interviews with SEs in Germany and Ethiopia. Our findings provide empirical accounts for a social entrepreneurial search model integrating different search mechanisms and search heuristics. We identify three distinct types of SEs who apply the different search types focused search, tentative search and hybrid search based on their different complexity perceptions in different search environments and two distinct normative theories that guide their search as cognitive heuristics. We contribute to both research on organizational search and social entrepreneurship and our findings have practical implications for politicians, social entrepreneurs and educators.Publicationtype: Journal Article17 24 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: with files , Looking for a needle in a haystack : how to search for bottom‐up social innovations that solve complex humanitarian problems(Wiley-Blackwell, 2019-08-28); ; ; The worldwide increase in societal challenges is putting pressure on humanitarian organizations to develop sophisticated approaches to leverage social innovations in the humanitarian sector. Since humanitarian problems are complex problems, with the relevant knowledge being hidden, organizational search theory advocates the application of bottom‐up and theory‐guided search processes to identify the social innovations that solve these. Unfortunately, there has been no theoretical attention to understanding which approaches apply in this context. Further, established theory‐guided bottom‐up search processes, such as the lead user method, are unsuitable to the humanitarian sector, and we lack practice examples of adequate search processes. To start addressing this gap in theory and practice, procedural action research was done with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to develop a theory‐guided bottom‐up innovation search process for the real‐life humanitarian problem of recurring floods in Indonesia. It revealed that an innovation search process for this context must differ significantly concerning its objectives and the steps to be taken from the lead user method, which was used as a starting point. Further, a comparison of the technical quality and the social impacts of the identified social innovations with social innovations identified through a non‐theory‐guided bottom‐up search process (i.e., an innovation contest) suggests the superiority of this theory‐guided search process. With this conclusion and the insights derived throughout the development of the search process, this study makes important contributions to theory development in the social and open innovation literatures and delivers important recommendations for social innovation practice in the humanitarian sector.Publicationtype: Journal ArticleScopus© Citations 14 349 468 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: without files , Managing the Front End of Innovation—Less Fuzzy, Yet Still Not Fully Understood(2017-11); Publicationtype: Editorial137