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Empirical studies show that women tend to shy away from competition against men, especially in male-typed domains. Social entrepreneurship is such a competitive domain. Yet female engagement in social entrepreneurship would be desirable and important from a societal perspective. With the help of two experiments, we investigate whether offering female-only competitions can be an effective means to foster social innovation by encouraging more women to enter competition and thereby increasing market entry and overall social performance. Our results highlight the importance of the perception of the context (female-vs. male-typed) for the effectiveness of affirmative action. While women showed no difference in competitiveness between same-and mixed-gender tournaments for a female-typed task (developing a social business idea), offering female-only competitions drove more women into competition when confronted with a male-typed task (solving mazes). The latter was true for competitions featuring selfish rather than altruistic incentives. Hence, female-only competitions are particularly useful in male-typed contexts featuring selfish incentives, such as generally encountered in entrepreneurial competition. Since men also showed no adverse reactions to the affirmative action of female-only competitions, these competitions improved efficiency overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As innovation processes are characterized by high levels of uncertainty, key individuals' higher-level attitudes shape their behavior. We investigate new product development decision makers' and agents' attitudes towards two crucial innovation types: low-end innovation (positioned below the average market price of the product category) and high-end innovation (positioned above the average market price of the product category). While previous research suggests that these key individuals have inherent preferences towards low-end or high-end innovations, we lack knowledge regarding what constitutes their attitudes. Consequently, we investigate why some key individuals prefer low-end innovations while others favor high-end innovations. Using a qualitative approach, we collected data from 48 individuals, including a pilot study with 26 experts, followed by semi-structured interviews with 11 potential innovators and 11 actual innovators. We content-analyzed the data, applying inductive as well as deductive approaches. Our results reveal three overarching perspectives that innovators use to create low-end and high-end attitudes: the firm perspective (i.e., firm benefits and firm fit), the personal perspective (i.e., personal benefits and personal fit), and the societal perspective (i.e., social benefits). These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the human side in innovation management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and practitioners increasingly consider social innovation a market-based means to address social challenges. However, to fully harness the potential benefits of social innovation for society, we need to understand its drivers and value creation mechanisms. Specifically, we need to understand why individuals engage in social innovation (micro level), how they influence the social innovation process (meso level) and how this relates to social value creation (macro level). However, research is scattered across different fields so that links between levels of analysis remain unclear. We conducted a systematic literature review including 460 articles across different research fields to understand: (1) how key antecedents of individuals enable socially innovative behavior; (2) when and under what conditions socially innovative behavior leads to successful social innovations (connecting the micro and the meso level); (3) what key mechanisms of social innovation stimulate social value creation and social change (connecting the meso and macro level); and (4) what facilitating mechanisms enable individual innovators to address social challenges (connecting the micro and macro level). We develop an integrative model of the social innovation process, review the state of the art on social entrepreneurship and social innovation research, outline prevailing research gaps, formulate theoretical implications, and provide a future research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are founders' social identities affected by societal trigger events? To address this question, we build on social identity literature and theorize how the abrupt and significant increase in the number of refugees in Europe in 2015 is related to the strength of Darwinian, Communitarian, and Missionary social identities of founders residing in the affected countries. Furthermore, we introduce a country's percentage of foreigners before the 2015 refugee event as relevant contingency factor. Using a dataset of 6,841 nascent entrepreneurs from 24 European countries, we reveal a positive relationship between the 2015 refugee event and the strength of founders' Communitarian identity. This relationship is even stronger when the previous percentage of foreigners in a country is lower. Interestingly, we do not find significant relationships between the refugee event and Darwinian or Missionary identities. Our study provides important contributions to the (founder) social identity literature and valuable implications for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abstract of the article "Are All Innovation Resisters Laggards? An Exploratory Study on the Idiosyncrasies, Motives, and Roles of Innovation Resistance Leaders" by Nadine Hietschold and others is presented.

Understanding why consumers adopt or refuse innovations is crucial for new product success. Adoption research suggests that relatively stable innovation characteristics and personal characteristics determine whether consumers adopt. Research on consumer resistance complements this perspective with resistance barriers that consumers and firms need to overcome. However, neither research stream offers detailed insights into the dynamics of behavioral change on a micro-level. Which triggers induce consumers to overcome barriers and to adopt an innovation at one certain point in time? This article studies such adoption triggers and investigates whether adopters and non-adopters differ in their assessment of adoption triggers. This study uses 160 face-to-face interviews with adopters and non-adopters of nine different innovations to create a taxonomy of adoption triggers. The framework contains three novel trigger categories: increasing innovation attraction, reducing barriers and tilting the system. Frequency analyses reveals that non-adopters expect changes in the innovation before they overcome adoption barriers. In contrast, recent adopters actually report a reduction of barriers through knowledge acquisition or a social system push as the adoption triggers. These results complement the existing, static models of innovation adoption and resistance by offering a dynamic, micro-level perspective. We discuss practical implications and suggest avenues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological progress through innovative products and services is the key driver of social and economic well-being. Unfortunately not every individual has access to beneficial innovations or the capabilities to utilize those innovations. Today these inequalities are one of the core challenges of our society. Research in multiple disciplines is addressing this topic by analyzing disenfranchised individuals, innovation policies and the strategies of organization. This symposium addresses the firm perspective and provides insight in practices, capabilities and organizational structures that enable firms to successfully create and capture value at Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) markets. The format features four presentations that focus on I) firm capabilities to create low-cost innovations, II) disruptive innovations at the BoP, III) coordinating 'dirty work' to overcome organizational design failure, and IV) cultural brokers as enablers of successful innovation for inclusive growth. After the presentations, two experienced experts will lead a discussion on further avenues for research and implications for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we develop a model of stakeholder integration in new product development (NPD) that (i) explains the drivers of the process and (ii) proposes a framework of capabilities that firms need for successful stakeholder integration. The focus lies on external stakeholders that directly influence commercialization, purchase or adoption of products. We conducted a systematic literature review and content-analyzed the selected sample of 103 articles. The study was restricted to the medical device industry to enable the consistent search and categorization of information. In the article we dedicate a section to show how the framework applies to other settings. The drivers of stakeholder integration were classified into push factors (potential benefits for the focal firm) and pull factors (potential benefits for the stakeholders). Three capabilities for stakeholder integration were derived from an analysis of the barriers to and the success factors of stakeholder integration in NPD: stakeholder identification capability, stakeholder interaction capability and stakeholder input integration capability. Theoretical and practical implications follow from the improved understanding of stakeholder integration processes and the uncovering of the capabilities that support firms in this task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]