Non-Profit Organizations as Facilitators of the Sustainable Social Innovation of Firms: An Italian Case Study

Abstract

Non-profit organizations (NPOs) are becoming top players in the business arena and can significantly contribute to socially sustainable development by leading several open innovation (OI) processes. The present study investigated the functioning of an NPO (ELIS, based in Rome, Italy), that acts as an open innovation intermediary in a large consortium of enterprises. By adopting a mixed-method approach, key aspects related to the NPO’s organizational culture, the OI management process within the consortium, as well as leadership skills and values were investigated among 77 employees and 8 managers of the NPO. Results showed that the managers’ approach to OI, teamwork, and market challenges significantly affected the NPO’s ability to produce OI among the consortium members. Moreover, empowering leadership, and a culture of trust and mistake acceptance were highly valued by the NPO in view of an effective OI performance. The study contributes to the current literature by highlighting the conditional factors of the NPO’s capability to create open innovation with enterprises, and push them toward societal change. Implications for OI development have been discussed.

Nurturing Social Innovation Capabilities in Businesses Through Open Innovation

“…While the literature argues that the involvement of a wide network of stakeholders, and their interconnections, can determine the nature and the success of SI [9,54], results from the three cases show that the number of external knowledge sources and the frequency of their relationships -i.e., the depth and breadth of OI -leads to a combination of SI capabilities to effectively sustain the developed solution in the long term. The capability of stakeholder empowerment and relationship-based engagement confirms that the collaborative SI process should derive from a constant dialogue with external SI actors and the evaluation of ideas from external sources of innovation [21,80]. The capability of territory bonding combines routines of external networking, social venturing and user innovation as collective actions to co-design and co-deliver with local communities, businesses and organizations, also with a continuous interface with local policymakers and formalized institutional structures that encourage cooperation [24,46].…”

“…Deliberate stakeholder engagement in SI can be often based on the cocreation with target beneficiaries [10] or innovation intermediaries to tackle societal problems. Indeed, SI is further improved if OI intermediaries such as brokers and non-profit organizations bring attention to the role of social structures and the provision of informal resources in the process [1,21]. User innovation can further support gathering information on market trends and searching for individuals who have already developed solutions for specific social needs [25], or being directly involved in the co-production process [66].…”

“…The study of the role of OI in the context of innovation with social purposes is argued to be a relatively young field in the literature [25]. More recent research at the intersection of OI and SI explore their synergies from the perspective of the community, e.g., in fab labs [81], non-profit organizations [21] and government agencies [63]. We contribute to this stream of research by focusing on businesses having the role of main promoters of SI, while the viewpoint of business innovators is mainly studied in the OI context [81].…”

“…Managing the creation of social benefits beyond the business perspective asks inevitably for an open and collaborative approach, with participation in SI projects and policies to deliver the right and sustainable outcomes [20]. On the one side, identifying co-creation opportunities and contributions to intangible assets with other SI actors allows businesses to reach more immediate and applicable social benefits and competencies development [21]. On the other side, a successful engagement of stakeholders in the innovation process requires a proper understanding of the dynamics and mechanisms through which OI generates both social and business value [17,22].…”

“…This perspective is fundamental also to study the innovation processes contributing to the transition to circular economy and in general sustainable development and change in resource consumption, where the social dimension requires rethinking management and reorganizing stakeholder value creation [30,31]. Literature on SI has prominently focused on the role of third sectors and non-profit organizations as the main promoters or facilitators of collaborative innovation processes towards SI development [21]. An important focus deserving attention is how business organizations deploy their resources, and develop innovation capabilities for sustainable innovations through the implementation of the OI approach [32].…”