Hur social är den Sociala Ekonomin? : Sociala företag och regionala innovationssystem

Sammanfattning: Authors: Kosovare Islami and Selma Sumic Date: 2014-06-02 Title: How social is the social economy? – social businesses and their regional innovation system. Level: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration Supervisor: Bengt Johannisson Examiner: Frederic Bill Key words: Social entrepreneurship, regional innovation system, business - to - business The purpose of this paper is to create a model of regional cooperation network for social enterprises as the base of an innovation. This model will be created through the empirical basis. The model proceeds from the three pillars that have been developed and include social entrepreneurship, business - to - business and regional innovation. Entrepreneurship has multiple definitions which treats such as innovative thinking, targeted and creative individuals. Social enterprise has attracted more widespread interest, while it is considered one potential solution for the development of a sustainable society. Entrepreneurship includes growth and variable economic development as well. This is also called the regional innovation system which is based on the cluster as a sort of strange phenomenon where the weight is in a centralized learning. Learning in this context is based on social interaction and the close connection of both cultural and geographic support of both exchanges, trust and innovation. As for business-to-business it is all about the companies and their use of each other’s resources or the promoting of one each other. This is an effect that results in a strong bond between businesses and therefore creating value for corporate clients. This paper has its basis in qualitative research study where an abductive approach has been used. The empirical data collected was based on seven different companies that are part of a network which is called SNI (Social Network International). In addition to these, three more companies were selected to ultimately be able to perform a better comparison.