The aim of this study is to provide new insights into the social innovation (SI) development process in the context of social start-ups. A multiple case study identifies the issues and mechanisms for social start-ups to develop a social need into a potentially scalable innovation and to validate and scale it up, while avoiding a possible failure. Results show that key challenges faced by social start-ups can be characterized according to the stage of the SI development path. Firstly, social start-ups' failure can be caused by the lack of expertise in social problems and of flexible processes for social ventures creation; secondly, by the lack of awareness of SI benefits and proper resources allocation; and, finally, by a weak understanding of the impact and intangible outcomes of the developed SI in society, while ensuring its economic sustainability. Successfully overcoming these challenges requires social start-ups to put in place the following mechanisms: (1) leveraging a vision and motivations that balance tensions in terms of the radical, economic and cultural aspects of SI; (2) engaging the SI stakeholders in different (and sequential) phases of SI development process; and (3) identifying and adopting the most suitable technological, financial and communication tools in an integrated way.

中文翻译：

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社会初创企业如何在发展社会创新时避免成为流星

本研究的目的是为社会初创企业背景下的社会创新 (SI) 发展过程提供新的见解。一项多案例研究确定了社会初创企业将社会需求发展为具有潜在可扩展性的创新并对其进行验证和扩大，同时避免可能的失败的问题和机制。结果表明，社会初创企业面临的关键挑战可以根据 SI 发展路径的阶段来表征。首先，社会初创企业的失败可能是由于缺乏对社会问题的专业知识和社会企业创建的灵活流程；其次，缺乏对 SI 利益和适当资源分配的认识；最后，由于对发达的SI在社会中的影响和无形的结果缺乏了解，同时确保其经济可持续性。成功克服这些挑战需要社会初创企业建立以下机制：(1) 利用愿景和动机来平衡 SI 的激进、经济和文化方面的紧张局势；(2) 让 SI 利益相关者参与 SI 开发过程的不同（和连续）阶段；(3) 以综合方式确定和采用最合适的技术、金融和通信工具。