Cultural Entrepreneurship in Social Innovation: Co-creation in Circular Economy Ventures

Abstract

We study circular economy ventures in Finland to develop a model of how social innovators use cultural entrepreneurship, symbolic and ideational resources, such as stories, categories, and concepts, to engage stakeholders in social innovation co-creation. Social innovators, whose creative work focuses on complex, deep-rooted social problems, regularly struggle in engaging customers and other stakeholders in innovation co-creation, risking the lasting impact of their innovations. The initial findings of our study, which draw on an inductive analysis of 31 circular economy venture founder interviews and an original venture archive, reveal a range of cultural entrepreneurship that the ventures use in shaping their customers’ engagement in different stages of social innovation co-creation and concentrating either on social problems or solutions. These findings contribute to the literature in cultural entrepreneurship and social innovation by demonstrating how cultural entrepreneurship allows social innovators to bridge institutional boundaries between them and the innovation stakeholders by orienting stakeholders’ collaborative efforts on different aspects of social innovation and demarcating co-creation areas that allow conflicts of interests to be subdued.