The research investigates how social innovations (SI) are developed. The research on innovation has focused on the development of products and services with a market focus in order to achieve competitiveness and profitability. Also, the traditional models of innovation represent long and costly projects by research and development departments, neglecting other innovation types. SI as a process remains insufficiently explored even in social entrepreneurship studies, which typically focus on isolated stages (e.g. ideation or scaling). Therefore, the research aims to uncover the whole SI process from ideation to adoption. SI is defined as the development and implementation of new ideas (products, services, processes, methods), with the primary purpose of improving the quality of life of the people at the bottom of the pyramid, and with the condition that financial goals must be directed to sustain the initiative and spread the solution. Since SIs are primarily socially motivated, they should be distinguished from traditional innovations, although how they develop is unknown. In order to uncover that, process tracing techniques are used to determine the causal relationship between events based on evidence raised in multiple cases using sources including reports, audio-visual documents, websites, and interviews with founders and managers related to the innovations. After tracing the events, the process of social innovation is uncovered in four phases: (1) personal experience; (2) emergencial solution building; (3) spreading, which includes refining the solution and legitimating it; and (4) value complementation. Tracking events and the steps for SI contributes to knowledge building serving as a reference for organizations and innovators to develop new ideas. Besides, the study aggregates the literature related to social entrepreneurship and innovation management, as it examines integratively the process of a type of innovation aimed firstly at social objectives. The research also proposes an SI definition to be used in future research.

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 88887.572165/2020-00