Making the most of digital social innovation: An exploration into success factors

• Digital social innovation levers digital technology to address societal challenges. • Our framework facilitates successful development of digital social innovation. • 18 success factors for digital social innovation development. • Human, organisation, and environment as success factor categories. Digital social innovation (DSI) is an emerging phenomenon that leverages digital technologies to address societal challenges. With the growing interest of customers, employees, and investors in societal challenges, as well as the availability and affordability of digital technologies, DSI gains importance for organisations to achieve long-term success. Although DSI has evoked increasing interest, research and practice are far from realising the potential of DSI as guidance on its successful development is missing. To minimise the risk of failure and fully exploit the benefits of DSI, this research explores DSI success factors based on a systematic literature review and explorative interview. Building on these valuable insights, we present the DSI success factor framework (DSF) consisting of 18 DSI success factors in three categories, moderating factors, and the DSI success. The DSF contributes descriptive knowledge on DSI development and is a foundation for further research while inspiring practitioners to successfully develop DSI.