Comparative Cases From Portuguese Social Innovation Public Policy

Innovation generally involves poorly structured problems, which do not have an obvious solution within the knowledge available. The solution is usually evolutionary, resulting from several attempts and refinements. Social innovation aims to address social problems and needs, which happen regardless of economic odds. This innovation can be an answer to a social need by embedded solutions and by different stakeholders' mobilization to sustain effective social change. It also can be about the best resource use or cost reduction, mainly the social ones. Portugal has developed a pioneer public policy to encourage entrepreneurship, social innovation and boost the social investment market. The Portugal Social Innovation Programme (PIS), links investors and social entrepreneurial initiatives (SEI) and offers support to structure SEI in a sustainable way by providing resources and network. Insofar SEIs accomplish the contracted results, PIS rewards their private investors. Thence public and private capital share risks, and the public capital is driven to the most effective initiatives. PIS enables the experimentation needed for innovation building and increases the chance of public services improvement, contributing to enhance the welfare-state. In this sense, this research goal is to describe three revealing cases of SEIs supported by PIS, highlighting innovation features and contextualizing theory. The data was collected by 3 semi-structured in-depth interviews which responses could be found in a database with 120 cases built by an online survey. The thematic content analysis was conducted applying codes from theory and PIS's investment criteria. Then cases were compared to understand the outcomes of investment criteria and to examine theoretical features. The study discusses PIS investment criteria and presents SEIs types endorsed by it. Thus, it helps disclosure and stakeholders' expectations management. It also enables understanding the relationship between innovation, business model sustainability, and social value creation in the Portuguese context. The SEIs analyzed endorses PIS's innovative potential in building networks and foster the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This study also poses a new way to identify and compare different kinds of social values paving the way for a less subjective and tricky assessment routine.