Social Enterprise Growth by Design: Using design to incubate and accelerate social enterprises

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles and impact of design in the incubation and acceleration of social enterprises. It aims to understand the impact of design on an evolving social enterprise ecosystem and its contribution to improving the business outcomes of social enterprises. Study design/methodology/approach: The study used an exploratory and qualitative approach, utilising case studies and interviews. The comparative case study methodology was particularly applied to evaluate the influence of design on the development of social enterprises and identify critical issues in the utilisation of design by social enterprises based on selected cases in the UK and South Korea. Empirical data were gathered from in-depth case studies of design utilisations (UK: n=2 and South Korea: n=2) and applications (UK: n=6 and South Korea: n=15) for the growth of social enterprise and its ecosystem, as well as 27 experts from the social enterprise and design sectors in the UK (n=17) and South Korea (n=10), and 22 social enterprises (UK: n=12 and South Korea: n= 10). A combination of content and thematic analysis was used to discuss and synthesise the key findings and extract key considerations. Findings: The findings demonstrate that depending on the types of design elements and applications, social enterprises and their ecosystem can be influenced in different ways; various design elements can be adopted to improve and develop social enterprises’ products, services and business models and/or used to enhance social enterprise ecosystem stakeholders’ support competence and facilitate network. Also, they suggest potential future directions for applying the essential design elements of social enterprise growth, considering the functional role of design according to the business stages of social enterprises and developing a systematic approach to encouraging interaction between the social enterprise and design sectors. Research limitations/implications: The main limits of the study are related to case studies from only two countries. Although it was required to adopt the working definitions of social enterprise used by the two countries to reduce debate regarding the concept of ‘social enterprise’, this may result in the research underestimating the heterogeneity of social enterprise types, leading to the inclusion of enterprises with more similarity to commercial businesses. Practical implications: The findings of the study may contribute to ecosystem development that would be more efficient and optimised for social enterprises to improve their competitiveness and innovativeness. Originality/value: This paper focuses on establishing a foundation for research and practice on design for social enterprise by providing theoretical and practical insights into the impact of design on social enterprise growth.