RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

How to create a social enterprise: a case study 225
Figure 3: Case process according to user entrepreneurship model (adapted from Shah &
Tripsas, 2007)
Solution generation, selection, and opportunity recognition
The solution was a social enterprise that would provide employment for the rehabilitees.
In this point, the employee identified that they could just establish a new firm and then, develop
a set of services and products to sell. This path would have required financial capital and decisions
about the firm structure and ownership before the actual business ideas were invented.
This would have required a lot of resources and it would have taken the focus off from the
community and the actual problem.
For the involvement of community, “the bee of communal economy” -initiative was
launched as joint activity of the four non-profit organisations and a research unit, that hosts
Lahti Living Lab.
In order to manage and steer the process, the so-called pre-board was established. The
necessary ecosystem (cf. Moore, 1993) or social innovation system (Phillips et al., 2015)
around the solution (i.e. social enterprise) started to take shape. This corresponds to idea of
mobilisation (Korsgaard, 2011). Before the actual idea generation workshops, the pre-board
members had their own orientation workshop, so they could learn how to manage these type
of collaborative idea generation workshops themselves. The learning and activation of community
by idea generation workshops provided those important benefits for non-profit organisations
that process innovation generates (Hull & Lio, 2006).
Pre-board made and agreed on the rules that were openly communicated to everyone
involved. All the pre-board meetings were public and anyone could join. However, in order
to secure decision making effectivity, outside-board participants had only right to comment
in the pre-board meetings. The pre-board adopted the role of the leader for the entrepreneurial
process. The important task was the selection of potential ideas, which took place in the open
pre-board meetings. Pre-board were responsible for the opportunity recognition and that activity
took place constantly during the idea generation phase. Viability of idea or opportunity
was constructed from pieces: whether the ideas fit for previously determined “good idea criteria”
and if there was found enough potential people to develop the concept further. These