Abstract

Social enterprises (SE) are valued as innovative solutions to complex problems but require conditions to nurture and support them. Most support systems rely on individuals who already have an SE idea, and there is very little research on understanding what conditions can support to cultivate the willingness and motivation to engage individuals in this activity. An exploratory study was led to understand whether a particular event, Service Design Jam, can provide such conditions. The paper introduces the study of the Lufbra Jam, organised at Loughborough University, from which two social enterprises, Crop Club in 2013, and FrenPals in 2014 emerged. The research findings suggest that Lufbra Jam enabled individuals to identify socially and environmentally focused issues and formulate service solutions that they deemed to be desirable and feasible. It also provided an insight that winning and an enterprising workshop were important SDJ elements that helped teams to recognise their service ideas not only as feasible solutions but as SE opportunity for the team to take forward.

Keywords

service design, social enterprise, social innovation, social value

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Jun 17th, 12:00 AM

An exploration of Service Design Jam and its ability to foster Social Enterprise

Social enterprises (SE) are valued as innovative solutions to complex problems but require conditions to nurture and support them. Most support systems rely on individuals who already have an SE idea, and there is very little research on understanding what conditions can support to cultivate the willingness and motivation to engage individuals in this activity. An exploratory study was led to understand whether a particular event, Service Design Jam, can provide such conditions. The paper introduces the study of the Lufbra Jam, organised at Loughborough University, from which two social enterprises, Crop Club in 2013, and FrenPals in 2014 emerged. The research findings suggest that Lufbra Jam enabled individuals to identify socially and environmentally focused issues and formulate service solutions that they deemed to be desirable and feasible. It also provided an insight that winning and an enterprising workshop were important SDJ elements that helped teams to recognise their service ideas not only as feasible solutions but as SE opportunity for the team to take forward.

 

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