Innovation capability assessment tools in social enterprises

Innovation is among the pursuits of any modern organization nowadays, constituting the core of collective progress and of competitive advantage. The global rising tendency in competitiveness urges companies, public institutions and other community actors to adhere to this naturally evolutionary pattern that occurs in any kind of system. To achieve welfare in a context of continuous changes, an organization has to make sure that its processes are perfectly aligned to its mission. Additionally, having a clear picture on its innovation capability, meaning the ability of producing a valuable output by transforming internal collective knowledge, enables it to follow the road to success. In the case of traditional enterprises, which pursue profit accumulation, evaluating the innovation capability is done on the basis of clearly defined instruments, but when referring to social enterprises, a variety of factors come in place and make the evaluation more difficult. The scarce current research done concerning the assessment of innovation capability for social enterprises makes this topic meaningful to be explored, so their societal purpose can be better delivered. Thus, the aim of the paper is to formulate a framework for determining the innovation capability of Romanian social enterprises by building on the good practices reflected by innovation projects in the social field, funded through the Horizon 2020 programme at EU scale. The research methodology resides on two pillars. In the first place, it contains literature review on the concepts of innovation, social innovation, innovation capability and the instruments used to assess it. Secondly, it brings together the exemplary undertakings of multiple social innovation projects delivered through the Horizon 2020 programme and concentrated into online reports, accessible through its website.