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With the aim of finding a balance between social and economic benefits, the social economy has reemerged in the crisis of the welfare state. The Fordist welfare state can be characterized by state-provided welfare, the mediation of paid work and welfare by the labor market and redistributive policies. Globally, neoliberalism and the market have given rise to social exclusion; in this context, the social economy is emerging as an alternative to the market domination of societies. This paper aims to construct a conceptual framework of welfare provision in an open innovation era.

The welfare state system between the Fordist welfare state and post-Fordist welfare state is different on provision and delivery of welfare service. To construct the conceptual relation among the social economy, the state and the market and welfare provision in the social economy, this study mainly used the literature review.

Attention should be paid to civil society at the local level to ignite social economy through open social innovation. Various social actors in the local community need to change and develop the social economy with collaborative entrepreneurship and collaborative economic mindsets.

This paper presents the welfare service model led by social economy and open innovation, as well as social change. To fill the shortage of welfare provision caused by crisis of the welfare state, social economy is considered as an alternative for neo-liberalism. This study emphasizes that endogenous local development is a prerequisite for social economy as a welfare supplier.

In the social economy, reciprocity, democracy, self-help and social capital at the local level are emphasized. Also, open innovation put emphasis on collaboration economy among the local community, firms and the public sector: this emphasis can be expected to affect the welfare provision system and the social relations surrounding welfare. To address social problem and social needs, the social economy can adapt and apply the open innovation model.

The previous researches on open innovation mainly deal with the business sector and the public sector, but this paper has a focus on the relation between provision of social welfare and social innovation. The social economy is likely to function properly on the foundation of open social innovation.

The digital economy has become a new engine for economic development, promoting the upgrading and transformation of traditional industries as well as fostering emerging industries and forms of business. Nonetheless, how does the digital economy affect innovation? The research objective is to explore the specific impact of the digital economy on innovation output.

This paper innovatively adopts the dynamic panel data model (DPDM) to carry out an empirical study on the impact of the digital economy on innovation output, through the observation of 30 provincial-level administrative regions in China. Furthermore, the paper innovatively analyzes the impact of different dimensions of the digital economy on innovation output and the impact of the digital economy on different dimensions of innovation output.

It is found that the digital economy is conducive to boosting innovation output considering innovation continuity. Specifically, the driving impact of core industries and enterprise application of digital economy on innovation output is more prominent, but the driving impact of infrastructure and personal application on innovation output is not fully played. Meanwhile, the driving impact of the digital economy on the innovation output quality is more significant than that digital economy on the innovation output quantity.

This study employs a DPDM for the first time to investigate the specific impact of the digital economy on innovation output, and contributes to the existing literature on the digital economy and digital economy-driven innovation. The findings offer a comprehensive explanation for the impact of the digital economy on innovation output, which has reference value for the formulation of innovation policies driven by digital economy, thereby providing impetus for the sustained and stable development of China's economy.

The objective of this chapter is to explain how an innovation-driven economic development model can help to mitigate corruption and facilitate competitiveness in Nigeria.

With the use of descriptive narratives, Nigeria was examined in comparison with other countries such as South Korea. The chapter argues that Nigeria has not experienced development as much as South Korea because of her primary dependence on crude oil for economic sustenance.

Evidence from the statistics showed that innovation-driven economies are more competitive and less corrupt compared to natural resource-driven economies such as Nigeria. Nigeria has performed poorly in terms of competitiveness, transparency, and governance owing to her dependence on natural resources as a major means for economic sustenance.

Helps to explain why an innovation-driven economic development model is the solution to mitigating corruption and facilitating competitiveness in Nigeria.

Digital economic innovation is associated with risks. The lack of a platform's profitability weakens the operation's ability to sustain innovators and increases the possibility of the business' termination. Relevant data demonstrate a significant upward trend in the exit of Chinese innovators of the digital economy. The study aims to clarify the role of an effective government and effective market in the prevention and control of the withdrawal of innovators.

Based on balanced panel data of 31 provinces and cities from 2010 to 2018, this study uses the individual fixed effect model to study the impact of the marketization level, the market's scale and government interventions on the withdrawal of innovators. Simultaneously, based on the spatial econometric model, this study examines the spatial spillover effect of the withdrawal of innovators.

Results indicate that government interventions have an inhibiting effect on the withdrawal of innovators. Moreover, there was a positive “U”-shaped nonlinear relationship between the marketization level and the withdrawal of innovators, and an inverse “U”-shaped nonlinear relationship between the market size and the withdrawal of innovators.

The paper first studies the relationship between the exit of innovators and government intervention, marketization level and field scale; takes the lead in the research on the role of the government and effective market in the prevention and control of the exit of innovators from the perspective of the exit of innovators and puts forward policy suggestions to promote the sustainable and healthy development of fintech innovation in China from the market scale and other aspects.

The authors aim to examine the potential opportunities and challenges multinationals operating in Africa are likely to encounter when they seek to pioneer disruptive innovations at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in African emerging markets.

Drawing on the extant literature on the BoP, disruptive innovation and the African business context, the authors explore the pioneering of disruptive innovations in the African socio-economic context.

This study develops various hypotheses to extend our understanding of disruptive innovations at the BoP. The authors also delineate potential managerial and institutional challenges multinational corporations (MNCs) are likely to encounter in their efforts to pioneering disruptive innovations for BoP customers in African emerging markets.

The authors develop some recommendations for MNCs on how to create and capture value from disruptive innovations in African emerging markets

The authors delineate African context-specific managerial and institutional challenges that MNCs might encounter when seeking to develop disruptive innovation at the BoP.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into indigenous, solution-based business models and their relevance for inclusive service innovation within specific social contexts in emerging economies, with particular emphasis on the role of culture and technology.

A proposed framework illustrates four factors that nurture socially driven service innovation in emerging economies: solution, inclusion, culture, and technology. Extant literature from studies in India, Latin America, and China illustrates distinct indigenous innovations and service relationships that exist at the base of the pyramid (BoP), which provides a foundation for a better understanding of socially inclusive service innovations.

A conceptual model of inclusive service innovation reflects an integrated, virtuous cycle, composed of service relationships that stem from the BoP at various levels of analysis across different income segments. These findings suggest notable research directions.

This study reinforces the importance of a solution orientation as a competitive business model to gain customer engagement.

Researchers and practitioners in emerging and advanced economies can use the approach suggested by this paper in their efforts to build sustainable business cultures and improve the well-being of society.

Previous research has not addressed the social or communal roles of service innovation; this study proposes an innovative switch from a traditional strategy of selling services toward a proactive approach that involves low-income customers as active resources to co-create social and business value.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an endogenous growth model, as a component of a broader study of servicization with skill premium and its policy implications in the evolving digital economy.

This paper develops a two-sector endogenous growth model which allows for the observed characteristics of digitally empowered structural changes. Specifically, the driving force of economic growth is the expanding variety of intermediate services as a consequence of innovation in services. The introduction of new intermediate services specifically contributes to total factor productivity in the production of service sector, and thus an uneven growth path with skill premium toward a service economy generally exists.

The principal finding of this paper is that the digitally empowered expanding variety of intermediate services due to innovation contributes significantly to total factor productivity in the production of service sector, and thus a servicization with skill premium generally exists along a steady-state path. In addition, this paper derives an optimal innovation policy to rule out the market failures due to innovation externality and market power in monopolistic competition conditions, and shows the Rybczynski effects of exogenous endowment changes in the evolving digital economy.

The principal contribution of this paper is to determine how unbalanced endogenous growth along a steady-state path is linked with a service economy with skill premium in the evolving digital economy. In addition to this analysis, this paper provides policy implications – namely, that a positive but finite innovation subsidy can achieve the social optimum in the digital economy, and that an exogenous increase in high-skilled labor can speed up a digitally empowered economic growth.

This study aims to examine whether the determinant factors of innovations broadly accepted for traditional firms – the personal traits of the entrepreneurs, the features of the firms and the environment – also influence innovation in social economy companies.

Based on a sample carried out between small cooperatives and worker‐owned companies – which are the most representative legal forms in the Spanish social economy collective – the authors develop an empirical study using a logistic regression model.

The results show that, on the whole, innovation in these kinds of firm seems to be determined by the same set of variables as in the case of traditional firms. In addition to this, the present research reveals that the influence of these variables on entrepreneurial innovations depends on the kind of innovation. Finally, the findings also give evidence about the existence of an inter‐dependence among the different types of innovation in social economy firms.

The study is limited to small firms within the Spanish industrial and service sectors, but provides future researchers with further replication opportunities.

Taking into account the relevant contribution of social economy companies to the Spanish economy, and having noted the scarce number of studies about innovation in the social economy sector, this research offers a significant contribution by specifying the innovative behavior of social economy firms in Spain.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss possible future pathways of the Finnish science, technology and innovation (STI) system. The paper sketches three speculative pathways for the Finnish STI system.

Theoretical considerations behind the pathways are based on analyses of the determinants and behaviour of small open economies, their innovation systems and governance. The empirical background of the paper is in the current trends of the Finnish economy and STI system. The analysis of pathways is based on three dimensions: institutionalized policy environment and economy, domestic interest groups and policy and STI institutions and funding. Changes in these dimensions are analysed by paying special attention to two variables: the position of the nation state and the general economic development.

The first future pathway outlined is based on an optimistic view by setting Finland on the basis of past success factors as an European and global STI hotspot. The second pathway is based on the assumption that the Finnish STI system will be increasingly subordinated to international structures and decision-making. The third one is geared around the assumption that the Finnish STI system will be dominated by industries.

While Finland has been seen as a European showpiece of innovation since the early 2000s, currently the country’s national economy and STI system are undergoing a critical period. The paper sheds light on this transformation and its potential future outcomes and attempts to raise debate on the options policy makers may face in the increasingly complex global environment in small countries.

The paper introduces potential future avenues for the Finnish STI system and provides a contribution to the debate of the future of small countries’ STI systems and innovation policies by emphasising the limited space of the STI policy choices and how the development paths and space for policy making evolve from the interaction of socio-economic factors between domestic and wider international context.

Driven by the development of the global digital economy, knowledge management in industrial enterprises offers more possibilities for green innovation. Based on the perspective of external knowledge sources, this study aims to construct a panel regression model to explore the relationship between digital economy and industrial green innovation efficiency.

Panel data from 30 regions in China from 2011 to 2020 were selected as research samples. All data are obtained from national and provincial statistical yearbooks. Coupling coordination degree analysis, entropy method, panel regression analysis, robustness test and threshold effect test by Stata 16.0 were used to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results demonstrate the hypotheses and reveal the following findings: the digital economy is positively related to industrial green innovation efficiency and external knowledge sources, and external knowledge sources mediate the relationship between them. Moreover, based on the threshold test results, the digital economy has a double-threshold effect on industrial green innovation efficiency.

Based on the perspective of external knowledge sources, the proposed mediating mechanism between the digital economy and industrial green innovation efficiency has not been established previously, further enriching the research on the antecedents and outcomes of external knowledge sources. Moreover, this study estimated the direct influence mechanism and double-threshold effect of the digital economy on industrial green innovation efficiency from theoretical and empirical analysis, thus responding to the call of scholars and adding to existing research on how the digital economy affects the green transformation of industrial enterprises.