Role of Social Enterprise in Open Sustainable Innovation: Evidence from the Organic Food Supply Chain in West Bengal (India)

There has been growing recognition of the role of social enterprises in generating social impact while achieving profits for their owners. However, to attain these goals, social enterprises need to innovate for sustainability by fostering collaboration with external partners. The article delineates the role of a social enterprise (ONganic Foods) in promoting sustainable innovation practices to organic smallholders in an environment of external collaborations (state and other ON Conglomerate actors, including SwitchON, ONergy Solar and ON Skills) and building a sustainable agricultural value chain in West Bengal. Survey observations highlight a range of sustainability-oriented innovative measures that can be grouped into two categories, that is, eco-innovation and social innovation. Eco-innovation practices involve applying agroecological principles and adopting climate-resilient agricultural technologies that minimise environmental externalities, while also focusing on market-oriented measures that promote the stakeholders’ economic interests. Social innovations include empowering the local community, providing capability development training to smallholders, facilitating knowledge sharing, spreading environmental and health awareness among consumers, and imparting skill education to generate employment for local youths.