The Emergence and Evolution of Digital Social Ventures in Dublin, Ireland

Abstract

Digital social ventures are initiatives that intend to transformatively engage social and environmental problems through the application of digital technology and are a new phenomenon found globally. While the broad influence and consequences of disruptive digital technology are increasingly taken for granted, very little research focuses on the deliberate use of digital technology for social purpose. This study is situated within three areas of literature: disruption caused by digital innovations, the use of digital technology by social purpose organizations, and social entrepreneurship. The process of digital social venture emergence and evolution shows how flashy-sounding technological solutions develop into more modest and incrementally useful tech-supported adjuncts. A preliminary framework for conceptualizing the nature and process of digital social ventures shows how a Schumpeterian approach to social entrepreneurship as disrupting equilibrium gives way to a Hayekian approach as drawing on local, embedded knowledge to achieve incremental change.