Socio-Tech Innovation

Introduction to Socio-Technological Innovation

This book defines socio-technological innovation and lays out different aspects of technology innovation and adoption literature as applied to socio-tech innovation and entrepreneurship.

Socio-tech innovation refers to novel solutions that involve development or adoption of technological innovations to address social and/or environmental problems with a view towards creating benefit for the larger whole rather than just for the owners or investors.

Unlike conventional technological innovation, socio-tech innovation either develops a product specifically for underserved markets and adopts a model in which the market is not an afterthought but the raison d’être.

Social ventures have not been as successful in scaling up, though technology innovation-led ventures have; therefore, meaningful actionable insights that can help social ventures scale up successfully can be gleaned by this process.

This book offers researchers in innovation and entrepreneurship programs a unique and interdisciplinary approach to studying social innovation that is grounded in technology innovation.

This book features a series of socio-tech venture cases that illustrate these dynamics and can be used in undergraduate and graduate courses.