Exploring the role of technology in innovative social business models

Abstract

Business models in all industries are being disrupted by advanced technology (Morrar et al., 2017). This technological shift has the potential to create a more inclusive, global society (Tarik et al., 2020). Meanwhile, people in deprived communities remain living without essential resources to engage in societal rights (World Bank Development Report, 2019). There is a substantial lack of research on how social entrepreneurs are making use of new technologies when targeting deprived communities in emerging markets; how they solve the issue of implementing new technologies and the role of technologies in creating the desired societal impact (Gupta et al., 2020). The study addresses this gap and identifies what factors influence high-tech social entrepreneurs when creating, managing and striving for a sustainable and profitable business model based in new technologies. This exploratory research provides an in-depth analysis on how 13 high-tech social enterprise are handling the opportunities and barriers present when aiming to implement innovative solutions based in new technologies for deprived communities in emerging markets, in Africa and India. The research methods consisted of qualitative interviews with the founders of the startups. The findings were derived through single case analysis and pattern matching to further be aggregated through cross-case analyses. The results show how social entrepreneurs deal with the many challenges of implementing and making use of new technologies in markets where many advanced technologies are less familiar. Findings further show how the enterprises adapt their technologies to minimizing data usage and personalised offerings and customer experiences. The technology implementation also requires a sophisticated handling of several issues, e.g. users’ fear of being tricked due to not understanding the technology. It also reveals a business strategy, where these entrepreneurs are using information from formal markets through digital technology, to create solutions for the deprived communities. such as publicly available resources and open innovation, e.g. open source software. This study addresses the gap in literature on how new technologies are used and applied in social business models design when targeting deprived communities. The paper contributes to social innovation and entrepreneurship literature by increasing the knowledge on the potential use and role of new technologies in deprived communities for social and commercial goals. It also contributes to technology innovation literature by presenting new contextual factors to consider when innovating through advanced technology.

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