Institutionalising design thinking in social entrepreneurship: a contextual analysis into social and organizational processes

Kummitha, Rama (2018) Institutionalising design thinking in social entrepreneurship: a contextual analysis into social and organizational processes. Social Enterprise Journal, 14 (1). pp. 92-107. ISSN 1750-8614

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Purpose
Design thinking is attracting practitioners and researchers in various walks of life. User integration principle as part of design thinking is expected to transform product and service creation and delivery. Accordingly, various organisations that venture into design thinking develop customised solutions and serve people’s needs. Social enterprises, which are familiar for their superior social value creation, have also claimed to embark upon this innovative approach to address wicked problems. The current paper makes an attempt to analyse various social and organisational processes that promote social enterprises to adopt design thinking to create products, which are relevant and viable among user groups. This paper finds that by adopting design thinking, social enterprises portray their product innovation genre, thereby representing their passion in addressing wicked problems more effectively.

Design/methodology/approach
This research adopts a qualitative case study method to understand the practice of design thinking in social enterprises.

Findings
In this study, it is found that that social enterprises adopt design thinking as a methodology while exploring solutions for stubborn problem space. However, neither communities nor social entrepreneurial teams are aware that they are carrying out design thinking practices. This research finds that social entrepreneurs and their teams take up designer roles and carry out designing processes by continuously consulting with user groups. One of the major reasons for the unintended adoption of design thinking is related to community integration and user participation in the day-to-day practices of social enterprises.

Originality/value
This study offers original research to understand social entrepreneurial exploration to adopt design thinking to create social value.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Social entrepreneurship, design thinking, co-creation
Subjects:	L900 Others in Social studies N100 Business studies
Department:	Faculties > Business and Law > Newcastle Business School
Depositing User:	Paul Burns
Date Deposited:	20 Sep 2019 10:01
Last Modified:	19 Nov 2019 09:47
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/40783

Downloads