Social finance in the social open innovation trend

The world is grappling with interconnected crises encompassing climate, biodiversity, water, and health, which require collaborative solutions. Tackling these “Great Challenges” (GC) demands new partnerships between the public and private sectors. This scenario necessitates a reassessment of how actions are organised, highlighting the significance of social finance in generating positive social, environmental, and financial outcomes. According to the authors, using a multiplexed stakeholder management perspective, social finance is viewed as a tool that actors may use while interacting with heterogeneous stakeholders to support transformative ideas, initiatives, programmes, or products aimed primarily at creating social and environmental value. This shift highlights the potential of this approach within an open innovation ecosystem, where diverse stakeholders exchange resources to co-create solutions for current and future generations. We aim to demonstrate that engaging a crowd and leveraging technological platforms can help move beyond traditional value-capture processes. This reflects a transition towards shared, collective value creation, aligning with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ESG impacts. Our study examines how open innovation, by leveraging crowds, can foster a financially sustainable ecosystem that simultaneously generates social and economic value. This necessitates understanding how diverse actors engage and how the role of finance is evolving within this framework.