Dr Sunghwan (Daniel) Cho

Purpose The new concept of corporate social innovation (CSI) has witnessed a steady growth in the business and management academic world over the past 20 years. Yet its adoption by corporations has been notably slow. This paper aims to operationalize the concept and develop a research agenda for CSI. Design/methodology/approach A systematic review of the current literature in the recent past (1999–2020) has been embraced in this research. The review is based on 40 articles and offers a descriptive and a thematic analysis of the literature. Findings The authors demonstrate the development of the concept over time and identify 12 themes to assist in the institutionalization of CSI. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide an enhanced overview of the current state of CSI. The paper shows how a variety of different definitions of corporate social innovation have been used in the business and management literature. The findings provide a unique conceptual framework and a detailed research agenda for scholars seeking to examine CSI.

The recent widespread interest of policy in entrepreneurial ecosystems has been complemented by a burgeoning academic research output. This research to date may be broadly categorized as focusing on place, actors, governance, and evolution. Of these groupings, evolutionary processes have been paid least attention despite their centrality to a dynamic ecosystem phenomenon that evolves from an origin through processes of growth, adaptation, and resilience. To redress this imbalance, we frame a future research agenda on evolutionary processes of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Foremost amongst these are the competing lens for the evolutionary processes, the appropriate and evolving geographic scope and boundaries of the ecosystem, and the evolving visible or invisible modes of governance. Methodologically, we call for greater use of longitudinal studies of such evolutionary processes.

This chapter discusses the importance of production clusters and entrepreneurial firms continuously generating innovation if they are to sustain their long-term competitiveness in today’s global economy. The study of the complexity brought about by globalization has been investigated by the Global Value Chain (GVC) framework, which has improved the understanding of how clusters and firms compete globally. However, neither the cluster theory nor the GVC framework address firms’ innovation through an explicit dynamic perspective and dedicate only partial attention to the role of entrepreneurial ventures. This chapter draws on elements from the developing entrepreneurial ecosystems literature to complement the cluster-GVC perspective and offers a finer-grained approach to the study of innovation in the global economy.

Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (EE) is a novel perspective to analyze the interplay between support systems and businesses in regions. Simultaneously, universities have been playing increasingly important roles in entrepreneurship, fostering economic growth both through the wider regional economy (RE) and their own University EEs (UEEs). Entrepreneurs in Residence (EiRs), chosen by universities as exemplar entrepreneurs, therefore provide potentially important conduits between the regional economy, UEEs and entrepreneurs, leading us to explore how and why do EiRs and universities interact in relation to entrepreneurial ecosystems to enhance regional economy? Our qualitative study of a UK university case, conducted in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic which severely impacted many businesses’ access to resources, gives a particular temporal context to this research. It identifies accessing resources, building legitimacy and undertaking bridging activities as the three highest-level dimensions characterising EiR-University interactions, which have relevance for both the UEE and regional economy more widely, offering a framework for future EiR programmes. This study contributes to the regional entrepreneurship and EE literature, by examining the role of regional universities as anchor tenants and catalysts of entrepreneurial growth and resilience within regions, and calls for further research into the evolution of EiR-university interactions in different institutional contexts.