Open Enterprises and Social Enterprises: Introducing the 123Go! Process

This paper explores the characteristics of a distinctive modality for facilitating innovation, Open Innovation, and suggests why and how it can be especially useful for Social Enterprises. The paper begins with a definition of innovation, suggesting that it is a process that transforms opportunities into outputs that can add social, environmental or economic value. The modality of Open Innovation is introduced as, over the past 20 years, it has become increasingly important for organisations to find new and better ways to use external resources, thereby enriching their innovation processes. The paper proposes that there are, in practice, two modalities of Open Innovation, one research and development (R&D) orientated and the other applicable to an organisation as a whole. The second modality, Organisational Open Innovation (OOI) is particularly relevant to Social Enterprises and a four-step approach (123Go!) for facilitating OOI in Social Enterprises is described. 123Go! advocates that OOI should be seen as an instrument for managing innovation to achieve defined ambitions or significant need-areas. The paper concludes by pointing out that Social Enterprise are frequently short of resources but have much goodwill, thereby enabling them to access external sources of help more readily than commercial enterprises. For this reason, OOI is particularly useful for Social Enterprises.