Engagement Platforms in Social Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

The world, today, faces enormous social and sustainability challenges, leading to significant debate about the role of social enterprises in our socio-economic landscape. While early literature on social entrepreneurship tends to depict entrepreneurs as heroic figures able to single-handedly drive social change, we argue no one actor can create social innovation in isolation. While a social entrepreneur plays an important role in institutional change, it is through their embeddedness in their entrepreneurial ecosystem that they create value and drive social innovation. Indeed, as all business practices are part of larger societal and institutional systems, joint effort and collective action is required for meaningful social progress to occur. We systematically explore the critical importance of engagement platforms through which such joint effort is coordinated within social entrepreneurial ecosystems. To illustrate our theoretical framework, rich examples from different social contexts are provided.