Profitability and social impact: Maintaining collective hybridity in social innovation ecosystems[Profitabilité et impact social : Maintenir l’hybridité collective dans les écosystèmes d’innovation sociale]

Recently, scholars have explored hybrid value creation at the ecosystem level, in which social and economic value is created collectively by ecosystem actors. While scholars extensively investigated hybridity at the organizational level, for example, in social enterprises, they have seldomly explored it in ecosystems. Yet, understanding how ecosystem actors achieve hybridity collectively is important to support further global actions for tackling grand challenges, which require collective action by diverse actors. Hence, this research builds on a case study of a social innovation ecosystem in the French disability sector to reveal how ecosystem actors manage and maintain such collective hybridity. We find that actors develop a dual management structure in which they achieve both social impact and profitability. Such duality supports the development of cross-interest collaborations and mutual control between actors, hence maintaining a careful balance between social impact and profitability. This research contributes to the ecosystem management literature by investigating collective hybridity management in an ecosystem. It also contributes to a better understanding of social innovation ecosystems, an emerging concept in the ecosystem literature. Finally, we suggest opportunities for future research and identify implications for practitioners and policymakers to address grand challenges through collective hybridity.