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Purpose – This paper aims to provide a detailed analysis of the key capabilities needed for social enterprises to succeed in the context of extreme poverty. Facilitating growth and alleviating poverty in the world’s most impoverished regions requires introducing innovative solutions to achieve social impact while generating financial returns. Design/methodology/approach – This paper studies two social enterprises operating in Africa. Semi-structured interviewers were conducted with co-founders of the organizations. The transcribed interviews were analyzed through an open coding process, iterated to overarching categories, and compared between the organizations using a grounded theory approach. Secondary archival data and respondent validation were used to triangulate these findings. Findings – This paper proposes a model that highlights five key capabilities social enterprises need to tackle complex societal challenges while overcoming resource constraints and institutional voids. The processes followed to develop and deploy these capabilities are delineated, and the necessity of hybrid mechanisms that blend non-profit and private-sector approaches is shown as a key enabler for social enterprises to meet their dual objectives. Research limitations/implications – This research is limited to two cases studies from two different industries in Africa. Future research would refine and extend the proposed model to increase generalizability. Originality/value – This paper addresses a gap in the literature on understanding innovation and entrepreneurship in Africa, and it proposes a model for innovation derived from data. This paper also offers insights to the growing community of social entrepreneurs looking to develop sustainable solutions to societal challenges.

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The technology impact on the various functions in retailing has been increasing. As the number of channels for a retailer increases, managing the dynamics of customer behaviour in the rapidly emerging multi‐channel environment becomes complex. Building and retaining a long‐term association with customers require that relationship management applications should be able to accommodate the various channels. Multi‐channel customers are the most valuable customers and hence multi‐channel integration would improve customer loyalty and retention. This paper considers the impact of Web services on multi‐channel integration, the customer decision‐making process and the implications of effectively managing buyer behaviour for competitive advantage. The role of Web services is explored with the help of a few customer purchase scenarios.

The adaptation-evolution strategies of firms have been a major area of interest. Internet based businesses operate in highly unstable environments witnessing shakeouts and changes in the industry structure. In this paper, we focus on the adaptive strategies and paths of adaptation of independent B2B marketplaces. The independent B2B marketplaces have undergone tremendous change with regard to their business models and products/services. Since their inception as pure market makers, these marketplaces have morphed into integration service providers with market making being one of the functions. What makes the adaptive strategies of B2B marketplaces interesting is the extremely short time period within which these changes happened. The research uses the case study methodology to identify the adaptive strategies of B2B marketplaces in terms of their product/service class evolution. The results based on the case studies suggest a three-stage adaptation model wherein the marketplaces progress through stages such as aggregation, transactions and integration.