Unpacking The Commonality Between Social Entrepreneurship and Design Thinking

Purpose: Practitioners and researchers have paid significant attention to social entrepreneurship (hereinafter referred to as SE) and design thinking (hereinafter referred to as DT). In effect, recent research has been conducted to understand the relationship between SE and DT. However, our understanding for the relation between those two concepts is limited due to the lack of empirical studies resulting in the discussion remained at high level status. This study investigated how SE and DT are related based on their commonalities through in-depth literature review and a qualitative case study in five social enterprises which are known for using DT methods actively in Korea. Research design, data, and methodology: Five cases were selected to conduct an in-depth analysis to advance our understanding for the relation of SE and DT. Data analysis was carried out in three steps following a typical thematic analysis model and findings were enfolded with further insight from SE and DT literature. Results: Based on in-depth literature reviews for SE and DT, this study derived three commonalities: Innovation, Hybridity and Human-centered approach. Through the interaction of three commonalities above, seven sub-domains were created with the help of case studies. The seven sub-domains are 1) Open co-creation, 2) User-centric, 3) Opposable collaboration, 4) Long-term perspective/ Large-scale sustainability, 5) Fast experimentalism, 6) Altruism/ Empathy and 7) Ambidexterity. Implications: In unpacking the commonality between SE and DT, this study offered future research in areas of how social organizations can apply DT methods based on in-depth understanding the commonality and how scholars and practitioners can shape the theory and practice of DT through the empirical examples in social organizations using DT. Furthermore, Social Designing (SD) is suggested as a way of combining SE and DT based on the need to find new alliances between those two concepts to achieve a real social impact.