The Research Relay with Karin Berglund

Who are you?

My name is Karin Berglund, and since January 2025 I have been a professor of sustainable business at the School of Business at Örebro University. I am a researcher and have long been interested in entrepreneurship and innovation—but perhaps not primarily as recipes for success or engines of growth, but rather as cultural, social, and political phenomena. What fascinates me is how entrepreneurship can both reproduce what we already know, while also opening up entirely new ways of understanding and organizing the world. 

We live in a time marked by many societal challenges—such as climate change, inequality, and democratic tensions—which make our lives both complex and, at times, difficult to navigate. In my research, I seek to understand how people, organizations, and societies navigate this complexity and how entrepreneurial initiatives can sometimes contribute to new ways of thinking, collaborating, and envisioning the future. 

At the same time, I’m interested in the slightly more uncomfortable realization that real change is rarely just about adding something new. Or, putting something in its proper place—as if it were a puzzle we’re assembling with certain pre-determined pieces. Rather, we should probably imagine change as a collage—something that is emerging. This means we also need to question what we take for granted—not least what we perceive as established and good. For it is through such critical scrutiny that we can see how we not only need to build the new, but sometimes also dismantle old structures, question our language and ways of thinking that limit us, since certain words and meanings can lead us astray.  

It is in that space of tension—between hope and uncertainty, between change and resistance—that I feel most at home as a researcher. It is there that I see how we can imagine new worlds, glimpse new paths, and give shape to emerging practices that have the potential to make a difference, both in big and small ways.  

How does social innovation relate to your research?  

In my research, I have rarely used the term “social innovation” directly, but in practice I have been working on what many would still describe as the essence of social innovation: developing, testing, and implementing new ideas (which take shape in slightly different ways) but which all address social needs, improve people’s circumstances, and contribute to new social relationships, understandings, and collaborations.  

Through my studies of social entrepreneurship and what I call alternative forms of entrepreneurship, I have become interested in initiatives that emerge in the gaps—between sectors, ways of thinking, and established ways of organizing society. These are often initiatives that do not quite fit into the prevailing view that innovation is driven primarily by companies, markets, and technological development. 

For example, I have observed collaborations in which the public, private, and nonprofit sectors attempt to work together to bring about more fundamental social change. As early as the beginning of the 2010s, we described such processes as social entrepreneurship. This should not, of course, be understood as either a “kinder” or “simpler” form of entrepreneurship, but rather as a way of working that involves actors from different organizational “territories” (think: the guy on the soccer field who meets the politician and the bank clerk and finds solutions to social exclusion). Social entrepreneurship describes how we come together—across boundaries—to challenge established norms, institutions, and power structures.  

Alongside my interest in entrepreneurship (in various forms), I have become increasingly interested in the concept of innovation itself—not least its limitations. For what actually counts as innovation, and who gets to define it? In my studies, it has become clear that the discourse on innovation is often narrow and prescriptive. It reproduces a status quo where innovation is almost automatically linked to technology, scalability, and market logic. There is also a tendency to exclude the human role in innovation—just think of the discussion surrounding AI! This, of course, has consequences, not least the emergence of ethical dilemmas. One of the dilemmas is that the concept of innovation shines such a bright light on certain phenomena that other things fall into ‘darkness.’ Such as, for example, the innovation work taking place in civil society and the public sector. The things we do “in our daily lives” that help us thoughtfully develop the Swedish welfare state. I don’t think the concept of innovation has room for these everyday practices, which consequently fall outside its scope—even though they may have far more profound societal effects. 

What I am therefore trying to do in my research is to broaden the concept of innovation; to show that innovation is also about democracy, the redistribution of resources, and people’s ability to participate in and shape society. And that innovation is not merely the result of ideas—but also consists of the process and practices that are shaped within it. Only then does social innovation cease to be a niche and become a question of what kind of future we actually want to make possible. 

What does social innovation mean to you today?  

For me, social innovation today is above all an exciting empirical field—a field where a multitude of interesting processes are underway, often at the intersections between different sectors. It is there, in these interstices, that new ways of organizing, collaborating, and understanding societal challenges emerge. 

At the same time, I think that much of this work remains relatively invisible. It doesn’t always fit into the established narratives of what social innovation is or should be. Instead, these narratives tend to reproduce certain ideals and formats—what counts, what it should look like, and which actors are given a voice. 

What I aim to do in my research is therefore to focus on the processes rather than the labels. To use social innovation not as a fixed category, but as a way to challenge established norms regarding what innovation is and can be. 

In an era marked by multiple simultaneous crises, I believe it is precisely these often-overlooked processes that can help us think differently about change. Social innovation then becomes not a specific type of innovation, but a way of asking more fundamental questions: what innovations does society need—and for whom? 

We also need to ask the question: “If we now need not only social but also green innovations” (thinking here of the emerging green industry), perhaps it is not just the technology itself that is interesting, but the collaborations and approaches that can ensure these technologies are not dismissed before they have been fully developed and can function in a market.  

A brief overview of current research?  

I am currently conducting research with my colleagues Anna Wettermark at Stockholm University and Hanna Jansson at the Karolinska Institute on how the Swedish healthcare system can transition to what is known as community-based care. 

A concrete example of community-based care that we are monitoring is a course of antibiotics that can be administered at home because the patient carries the medication in an infusion pump. This is an example of how advanced medical care can be provided at home (or at work, if the patient is able to work) and makes life easier for the patient, who avoids having to stay in the hospital for an extended period. On the surface, it may appear to be a technical innovation: a pump that enables care at home instead of in a hospital. But in our research, we focus on all the work that must take place around the technology to make this possible. 

It’s about how doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are collaborating in new ways, how responsibilities are being redistributed, how procedures are changing, and how patients and their loved ones are becoming part of the care process. It is in these often invisible processes that social innovation takes shape—a process reminiscent of what we saw among pharmacists during the pandemic, where much of the innovative power lay in the quiet, everyday work of adaptation. 

In the ongoing PROFS project, we are studying the entrepreneurial capacity of healthcare professionals to co-create new ways of working. To me, it’s clear that it’s not the technology itself that’s the most interesting innovation, but rather the collective work that emerges around it. It’s there, in the renegotiation of roles, relationships, and responsibilities, that close-knit care takes shape—where social innovation actually happens. 

What do you think is the most important issue today when it comes to social innovation?

I’m not sure it’s possible to pinpoint a single key issue when it comes to social innovation today. To me, it’s more about an approach. 

What appears to be crucial is our ability to understand social innovation as more than just a solution or a method—as a way to transform practices. In other words, how we organize ourselves, collaborate, and relate to one another, both within and across organizations. 

In an era marked by multiple simultaneous crises, we need not only new initiatives, but also new ways of looking at what counts as change. And that’s where I believe we are sometimes limited by our own preconceptions. Much of what actually makes a difference—in everyday practices, in relationships, in quiet transitions—is not always seen as “innovation,” precisely because it doesn’t fit into the established narratives. 

At the same time, that is perhaps precisely where the greatest cause for hope lies. There are already a multitude of wise, valuable, and often low-key processes underway which, if we begin to recognize and understand them as social innovation, can change the way we think about what is possible. 

So for me, it’s not just about creating more social innovation—but about developing our ability to recognize it when it’s already happening—because that’s when we can appreciate that “sticky quality” that makes innovations take root in us as people (how we view ourselves, our values, and the world), in organizations, and in society at large.  

Who would you like to pass the baton to, and why? 

I’m passing the baton to Maxim Vlasov at Umeå University, whose research addresses complex issues related to climate, natural resources, and entrepreneurship. I’m particularly curious to hear how he plans to give social innovation meaning.