Convergent innovation: a hybrid approach creating social and commercial value

January 12, 2022

Social enterprises seek to create sustainable business models, reach the potential of their social mission and obtain the greatest possible social impact through a new way of doing business.[1] They develop processes that create social value based on their initiative to find solutions to social problems through innovative strategies that involve the combination of resources and leveraging opportunities to stimulate social change.[2] In practice, however, many of these businesses face challenges. Despite considerable progress in recent decades, social value creation is still perceived with a certain amount of ambiguity, both complex to measure and understand in the context of other variables.[3]

What is convergent innovation?

Convergent innovation (“CI”) is anchored in the “whole-of-society” paradigm for the convergence of human and economic development,[4] which views the individual and society as part of the same complex, dynamic, and adaptive system, shaping and being shaped by each other.

CI pragmatically capitalizes on individual and collective actions deployed at different scales, each targeting behavioral change and progressive ecosystem transformation, one project at a time, making convergence the default modus operandi within and across sectors and scales.[5]

CI takes a modular approach that convenes a complementary set of participants from the public sector, the business community and civil society, loosely coupled around roadmaps that serve as virtual collaborative platforms on concrete, precisely targeted, and time bound projects targeting scalable, sustainable, and resilient solutions where convergence adds value to the participants and to society. Modularity is key to innovation in complex systems.[6]

The objectives of convergent innovation in the agricultural context

• Of particular relevance in the agricultural context, CI seeks to address the complex challenges that constrain both the profitability of businesses and society’s ability to face issues lying at the nexus of agriculture, industry and health systems.

• CI creates platforms to support decision-making and action by individuals and actors throughout society to increase production, innovation, and consumption of food derived from strategically-relevant agricultural commodities having high CI potential.

• CI achieves its aim by combining theory and data-driven science and technologies to capitalize on powerful computational models, and utilize human and social capital to bridge disciplines and sectors.

• In the context of agriculture and food systems, a convergent innovation approach supports agri-food businesses and organizations to accelerate targeted food innovations with lasting commercial success as well as environmental and social benefits.

Challenges of convergent innovation

Despite the current trend of a growing interest towards innovation as a means to solve social challenges, there are still a number of barriers to overcome in the area of convergent innovation:

• First, traditional concepts and systems often prove inadequate to properly understand these activities. Addressing social challenges by means of innovation requires setting clear and agreed-upon definitions and the creating new frameworks to better understand the changing nature of innovation and the multiplicity of economic, social and technical drivers.

• Convergent innovation projects are, by their nature, multi-dimensional insofar as a variety of issues are addressed as social challenges, which entails a significant degree of diversity in terms of knowledge basis in science and technology. The complexity derives from the wide scope covered by social innovations, as social challenges are related to demographic changes, climate change, poverty, employment, health care and education. The multidimensional package of existing social challenges and inabilities to foster social innovation suggest additional room for reform, particularly in the area of research, development and innovation system governance.

• Social challenges affect a number of stakeholders, including universities, research institutes, private companies, government, civil society and citizens. The approach to CI would stand to benefit from additional research on how to incorporate multidisciplinary approaches and and promote stakeholders’ involvement, in particular by favoring the implementation process of research priorities. To do so, the development of participative tools aiming at facilitating partnerships stands to benefit from additional reinforcement.[8]

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BB & CPM

[1] Pineda, A. “Las empresas sociales requieren un regimen especial, Expansión.” Retrieved from https://expansion.mx/emprendedores/2018/08/28/las-empresas-sociales-quieren-un-regimenespecial, 2018.

[2] Dees, J.G. (1998). “The meaning of social entrepreneurship: Comments and suggestions contributed from the Social Entrepreneurship Founders Working Group”. Durham, NC: Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Retrieved from http://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/ centers/case/files/ dees-SE.pdf, 1998.

[3] Hlady‐Rispal, M, & Servantie, V. “Deconstructing the way in which value is created in the context of social entrepreneurship.” International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(1), 62-80, available at https://doi. org/10.1111/ijmr.12113, 2018.

[4] Dube, L., P. Pingali & P. Webb. 2012. “Paths of convergence for agriculture, health, and wealth.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 109: 12294–12301.

[5] CI links siloed technological and social innovation (including organizational, social processes, financial, and institutional innovation) to maximize availability, access, and use of their single and combined convergent outcomes in both developing and developed countries, with a special focus on the most underserved populations.

[6] Ethiraj, S.K. & D. Levinthal. Modularity and innovation in complex systems. Manage. (2004)

[7] Laurette Dubé, Srivardhini Jha, Aida Faber, Jeroen Struben, Ted London, Archisman Mohapatra, Nick Drager, Chris Lannon, P. K. Joshi, and John McDermott. “Convergent innovation for sustainable economic growthand affordable universal health care: innovating the way we innovate” Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1331(1) (2014) 119-141.

[8] Yuko Harayama, Yoko Nitta. “Transforming innovation to address social challenges.” Workshop Proceedings, OECD Innovation Strategy, 2011.