Social enterprise referents: how social enterprises help organize nascent fields to address complex societal problems

Addressing societal challenges requires engaging diverse actors, but clashes between social and commercial interests often hinder coordination. In established fields, conflicting social interests can be integrated by challenging dominant commercial positions and rallying powerful actors. However, creating new fields without established actors and coordination mechanisms is more complex, especially when interests conflict. We explore this challenge through the development of reusable containers for takeaway food and beverages, where incompatible perspectives initially led to a field impasse. A pioneering social enterprise blending commercial and social interests emerged as a referent, facilitating collaboration and breaking the impasse. After initial field organizing succeeded, regulatory changes and increased demand exposed the shortcomings of early solutions, leading to setbacks. New social enterprises developed solutions to fill supply–demand gaps, anchoring new models in a market and driving both standardization and innovation. We introduce the concept of ‘social enterprise referents’ to highlight their essential role in organizing nascent fields to address complex societal issues. Without these referents, models for building new fields struggle to take hold. Successfully transitioning from an underorganized to an organized field requires sustained efforts from multiple social enterprise referents to anchor solutions in a market and uphold collaboration with field actors.