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Social innovation has been attracting attention in the literature and the practice field due to its intention to create social value. However, the social innovation process is still poorly studied and is marked by several disagreements in the existing models, often built from data coming from developed countries. So, the focus of this study is to answer the following research question: how is the social innovation process configured in a developing context?

The study investigated three cases of Brazilian social innovation processes through a qualitative approach. The authors also use the institutional levels perspectives to analyse the cases.

The main findings indicate that the social innovation process comprises five phases and occurs between the micro, meso and macro institutional levels. Besides, the social innovation process relies on the participation of different partners, in a non-sequential process, with the possibility of returning from one stage to another and is evaluated continuously over time.

This study may be useful for social entrepreneurs and their teams in organisations that generate social innovations (such as social enterprises) to understand how well-established initiatives have organised themselves over time. Public policymakers may also use the insights provided to create more favourable environments to create new social innovation initiatives and expand the existing ones.

The characteristics of the social innovation process revealed in this study contributes to the advancement of the area, mainly because it considers the perspective of institutional levels and is based on data from a developing country.