Sustainability of Technology-intensive Social Innovations:

1. Sustainability of Technology-intensive Social Innovations: The Role of Absorptive Capacity, Complementary Assets and User-orientation Xiaolan Fu and Christine Polzin University of Oxford

2. Introduction • Innovation research: Traditional focus on products, services and processes in business enterprises How to create (and sustain) value? • Little research on social innovation  Why do potentially useful social innovations may fail to sustain or to scale up? • Case: technology-intensive social innovations in developing countries

3. Outline • Introduction • Theoretical framework • Methodology • Case studies • Findings and Conclusions

4. Theoretical framework (1) 1. Social innovation • Taylor (1970), Gabor (1970) • Definition by Mulgan et al (2005): • Innovative activies and services • Goal: meeting a social need • Predominantly developed and diffused through organisations whose primary purposes are social 2. Technology innovation • Absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal 1990) • Complementary assets (Teece 1986)

5. Theoretical framework (2) Absorptive Capacity Training E-literacy Social Innovation Technology Innovation Complementary assets Physical & Digital capital Human & Organisational Processes Networks & partnerships User-led process Participatory design

6. Methodology • Case studies • Criteria of selection: • Age: > 5 years, beyond pilot-stage • Business model • Both third sector and corporate projects • Both success and failure • Location: Central & South India • Interviewed 9 projects • 3 typical cases emerge for comparison

7. Methodology Comparison of case studies: • Drishtee – Microfranchising, e-services kiosks, initially based on e-governance • N-Logue – Microfranchising, e-services kiosks in clusters of very small villages • E-Choupal (ITC) – two-way distribution channel for procurement & sales

8. Information, labour, money, requests Request information and services Government Villagers • Services: • Responses • Documents • Licenses Village Kiosks Communication Aggregation of local content • Content: • Health • Education • Agriculture • Local, etc Information provider Customer Information, money, inputs Business Case studies (1) - Drishtee Source: Loonker (2004: 154-155)

9. Case studies (2) – n-Logue Source: Jhunjhunwala et al. (2004: 33)

10. Case studies (3)- ITC e-Choupals Source: UNITAR (2005: 5)

11. Findings (1) • Absorptive Capacity • Participatory skills, education and e-literacy of kiosk operators • Facilitating skills for the design, implementation and maintenance of networks • Control skills of governments, influence on government regulation • Literacy levels, age and income of target groups

12. Findings (2) 2) Complementary Assets • Physical and digital infrastructure, • Human and organizational processes, improved business conduct • Generic assets (e.g. networks and partnerships)  Example: e-Choupals

13. Example: e-Choupals Human & organisational processes Digital & physical infrastructure E-Choupal kiosks Procurement hubs Sanchalaks Samjojaks Unbundle price discovery and physical transactions at the market place Eliminate inefficiencies inherent in the physical flow through the market place Appointed Farmer to handle digital infrastructure Former collaborator at the market to handle physical infrastructure

14. Findings (3) 3) User-led process • Common assumption: complete customer freedom of choice • Constraint: interlinked contracts • Complete end-to-end solutions as feasible social innovations

15. Conclusions • Research on technology-intensive social innovation can benefit from parallels in established research on traditional technology innovation • Absorptive capacity and complementary assets as technology-specific determinants of sustainability • Usage depends on the degree of freedom of customers in choosing new products and services • user-led design process • end-to-end solutions

16. Conclusions (2) Limitations: • Sample bias • Difficult to make generalisations