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Social entrepreneurship and impact investment in rural–urban transformation: An orientation to systemic social innovation and symposium findings

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Abstract

Migrations from rural to urban areas do not occur equitably. Food, economic, and health systems are strained by this global rural–urban transformation. Climate change exacerbates agricultural shifts and biodiversity loss. The fields of social entrepreneurship and social innovation address these systemic inequities by re-envisioning challenges as opportunities for positive change. Innovative finance models (e.g. blended-financing, public–private partnerships) emerge in support of such initiatives. Despite this transformative potential, social innovators face significant challenges when mobilizing resources, and when moving beyond niche endeavors to scale impacts that facilitate systemic change. This article engages in a sensemaking exercise: we review literature on social entrepreneurship and innovative finance, and report outcomes from a participatory symposium in China with a variety of ecosystem stakeholders. The results presented in this paper help clarify the space and offer next steps for theorists, social entrepreneurs, non-governmental organizations, development agencies, policymakers and investors.

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Notes

  1. In addition to ODA and private philanthropy, personal remittances and private capital flows, including FDI, are also important external finance for developing countries. For example, the remittance flows to developing countries in 2016 amounted to three times the total ODA that year, or USD 429 billion; foreign direct investment (FDI) was roughly the same size (World Bank Group/KNOMAD 2017).

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Funding

The first author acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 71573209, 71661147001); National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFD0201303) and National Social Science Foundation (16ZDA021). The authors are thankful to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the China Office for facilitating the workshop.

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  1. Agricultural Information Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xiangping Jia

  2. San Francisco State University, San Francisco, USA

    Geoffrey Desa

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Jia, X., Desa, G. Social entrepreneurship and impact investment in rural–urban transformation: An orientation to systemic social innovation and symposium findings. Agric Hum Values 37, 1217–1239 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10133-6

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