Innovative research methodologies on social entrepreneurship: Dive project case study

Abstract

Nowadays, huge social challenges emerge and solutions must be found. Social economy plays a fundamental role as it combines innovation with the execution of solidarity relations between the community and the involved environment, thus highlighting its mission and contribution to sustainable development. Dive Project is a European project of non-formal education on Social Entrepreneurship, just finished on December 2020. With three editions, great diversity of activities and high network of multicultural partner entities, it got high impact, brought community closer and linked formal education from Academy to non-formal education. Even though the literature review on the impact of such projects is not consensual, involved stakeholders have to know how to measure them, in order to balance their efforts and eventually apply added best practices in other situations. This study aims to understand social entrepreneurship as a factor of innovation and transformation, relating its purpose as an engine of human development, identifying good practices of European and national projects and analyzing the social impact on the project. The research was developed based on a qualitative and quantitative approach through a case study of the European project "DIVE". The study is divided into three parts: In Part I a literature review is conducted, with the aim of knowing the state of the art in what concerns concepts and perspectives of Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation; in part II the case study "Dive" is presented, explaining the adopted methodology and the collected data; in part III discussing of results is done an finally, main conclusions are displayed, indicating the limitations of the study and making suggestions for future lines of research.