Позитивные изменения. Том 2, № 3 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 3 (2022)

In social entrepreneurship, the business relying on the development of partnerships is an extremely important goal, because the specifics of the tasks solved by social entrepreneurs — their scope, scale, and depth — determine the need to develop cooperation with a number of organizations to achieve common goals and results, creating social good. The features of social entrepreneurship, which characterize the specifics of building partnerships, include the following:

• the use of cross-sectoral opportunities — creating public goods, filling the existing gaps of the market and the state are at the intersection of the interests of a number of actors in different sectors (public, commercial, and non-profit);

• going beyond competition — the creation of a public good implies going beyond such limits;

• strengthening the synergies — developing partnerships in social entrepreneurship leads to a tremendous increase in synergies by combining resources and competencies.

3. STRENGTHENING INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL ABILITIES RELATED TO AGILITY AND ADAPTABILITY

Adaptability and agility are becoming the cornerstone properties for organizations that want to survive in the long term. In “Lessons in Agility from a Dancer Turned Professor” published in Harvard Business Review, author Jennifer Jordan draws an analogy between the qualities required of a ballet dancer and the modern manager of an organization. “Agility” has become a hugely popular management buzzword. But what does it really mean? My first introduction to the concept came long before I studied management, let alone talked about it with executives in the classroom. My first exposure to agile was in the ballet studio, when I was studying to be a dancer. All young dancers aspire to agility — to be up there with the leaping Baryshnikovs, the twirling Kents, and the gliding Nureyevs. But now, far from the ballet studio, I see many of the characteristics that are required in ballet transferring to the executive suite: core strength, ability to change focus quickly, extreme flexibility and range of motion, and knowing where you want to go.” (Jordan, 2018).

In social entrepreneurship, the need to apply methods of agility, adaptability is associated with a number of features inherent in the organizations operating in this area:

• being close to the consumer, social entrepreneurs can adapt their products, services, business models to the expectations and needs of customers more accurately and in a more timely manner;

• idea of the desired result — the “theory of change”, which is the basis of every organization in the field of social entrepreneurship, determines the development vector of the organization, assumed to lead to the positive result, and thus sets the amplitude of change;

• the ability to “be big while staying small” — the social entrepreneurs’ ability to create systemic, large-scale social change, while remaining micro and small in size, determines the great potential of social enterprises to set the vector of impact beyond organizational boundaries.

4. DEVELOPING COOPERATION WITHIN ECOSYSTEMS

Developing cooperation within ecosystems is becoming increasingly important in the business world. At times, competition in the marketplace is often not so much about a variety of value propositions as it is about finding new ways to cooperate and collaborate. As the authors of “In the Ecosystem Economy, What’s Your Strategy?” note, “In many contexts, the firm is no longer an independent strategic actor. Its success depends on collaboration with other forms in a designed ecosystem spanning multiple sectors.” The main reason is the growing influence of ecosystems associated with “three big structural changes in our economy: … an unprecedented rollback of regulations protecting forms, a blurring of the separation between products and services, and technology that is revolutionizing how forms can serve their customers.” The author says, “an ecosystem-focused framework needs to answer five questions: Can you help other forms create value? What role should you play? What should the terms for participation be? Can your organization adapt? How many ecosystems should you manage?” (Jacobides, 2019).

Social enterprises are usually active participants in ecosystems, which increases their resilience in turbulent times, creates the conditions for creating systemic change, and opens up opportunities related to access to necessary resources and competencies. The peculiarities of social enterprises in terms of the development of cooperation within ecosystems are primarily related to the following facts:

• social enterprises are highly dependent on elements of the ecosystem — this, on the one hand, creates a number of constraints, but on the other hand, the mutual dependence within the ecosystem strengthens the connections, makes them special and hard to reproduce;