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How Can We Make Knowledge-Based Innovation Both Sustainable and Impactful?

New research by Professor Jill Kickul identifies key recommendations to impact-oriented, knowledge-based change.

08.24.23

How Can We Make Knowledge-Based Innovation Both Sustainable and Impactful?

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At USC Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles, you no doubt find yourself surrounded by entrepreneurs and their burgeoning businesses. The best of these individuals combine passion and innovation with a deep knowledge network promising to shift how we live, work and endure our later chapters. The problem is many of these knowledge-based enterprises exit the market as quickly as they enter it, limiting the economic and social impact they can have long-term.

But is there a way to make such innovators—for example Beamlink or Hydro Gummy, to name a few incredible businesses created by our USC Marshall Master of Science in Social Entrepreneurship (MSSE) alumni—sustainable? New research from Narayan Research Director at USC Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab Jill Kickul analyzes knowledge intensive entrepreneurs (KIE) and knowledge intensive sustainable entrepreneurs (KISE) to identify how existing entrepreneurial ecosystems can help foster KISE.

...Many of these knowledge-based enterprises exit the market as quickly as they enter it, limiting the economic and social impact they can have long-term.

You might be wondering, what is an entrepreneurial ecosystem? KISE and KIE grow out of social, economic and cultural contexts and are nurtured by community organizations, institutions and infrastructures that bolster or diminish their progress, depending on the alignment of resources, values, etc. To date, discussion on KIE remains focused on business models that neglect to tackle pressing issues related to social and environmental impacts as part of their missions.

The research, published in Technovation, emphasizes how important it is to foster KISE in driving sustainable transitions. But that means finding out how entrepreneurial ecosystems can better support it.

Studying businesses in Brazil, Kickul and her team discovered several key lessons on how to promote KISE in communities:

1) Innovation, knowledge and entrepreneurship is a major driver of economic, social and cultural development. Traditional KIS models are not always aligned with social and environmental progress.

2) KIS and KISE entrepreneurial ecosystems show a high level of similarity, meaning moving towards more sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems is quite plausible.

3) KIE and KISE should co-exist, as they can help to grow a larger entrepreneurial eco-system and economy.

4) The market forces alone cannot be responsible for bolstering KISE-friendly entrepreneurial ecosystems. Policies that help promote KISE activities by transitioning to impact-oriented entrepreneurship will help overcome existing barriers to sustainable transitions in cities.

5) Understanding ecosystems’ areas of advantage help gauge how well they can shape conditions for new ventures aligned with social or environmental issues being addressed. It also allows policymakers and practitioners to better comprehend an ecosystem’s strengths and foster specialization in sustainable goals in which the ecosystem already has comparative advantages.

Research universities, particularly those that become involved in collaborations with industrial partners, have an important role to play – a trend also observed in the case of KIE ecosystems. Additionally, there is a need for initiatives that look for both knowledge-intensive and social orientation in their entrepreneurial activities, aligning social and environmental positive impact with innovation towards economic development.