Fostering Entrepreneurial Innovation with Social and Environmental Impact: GoBeyond case study

In recent years, the concept of corporate value creation has undergone a profound evolution. Companies are increasingly required to integrate social and environmental considerations into their strategic and operational models, responding to growing stakeholder expectations and to the global urgency for sustainable development. Financial performance alone is no longer sufficient to ensure legitimacy; organizations must now demonstrate their capacity to generate positive societal outcomes, embedding ethical, social, and environmental criteria within their value creation processes. This thesis investigates the integration of social value measurement within corporate strategy through the lens of the Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology. Rooted in Stakeholder Theory and Social Impact Assessment (SIA), SROI provides a structured, monetized approach to assess and communicate the broader value produced by business initiatives. By translating social and environmental outcomes into financial equivalents, it enables comparability across projects and supports evidence-based decision-making for companies, investors, and policymakers. The method’s participatory nature—requiring stakeholder engagement in defining, valuing, and validating outcomes—ensures that the analysis captures the multidimensional impact of corporate activities. Despite limitations related to proxy subjectivity and the risk of oversimplification, SROI remains one of the most comprehensive frameworks for linking corporate accountability to measurable social impact. The empirical component of the study applies SROI to GoBeyond, a start-up contest and innovation platform promoted by Sisal, a major Italian operator in the gaming and payment services sectors. The initiative serves as a bridge between large corporations and start-ups with a social mission, fostering collaboration and supporting entrepreneurial solutions that address societal challenges through market-driven mechanisms. By analyzing the outcomes generated for different stakeholder groups—participants, service users, suppliers, third parties, and the wider community—the research quantifies the net social value created by the platform, calculating a specific SROI ratio that expresses the relationship between resources invested and the social value generated. Beyond the numerical outcome, the case study highlights the strategic potential of start-up contests as instruments of open innovation and shared value creation. These platforms enable corporates to overcome structural inertia, access innovative capabilities, and align business growth with societal needs. At the same time, they empower start-ups by providing access to networks, capital, and market opportunities. The findings demonstrate how initiatives like GoBeyond contribute to embedding social innovation within corporate ecosystems, strengthening legitimacy, competitiveness, and long-term resilience. The thesis thus contributes to both academic and managerial debates on how corporations can operationalize social impact within strategic management frameworks. It confirms that combining SIA and SROI allows for a transparent and comparable evaluation of social value, offering companies a practical tool to balance profit generation with accountability and stakeholder trust. Ultimately, the research underlines the role of innovation-driven partnerships in shaping a new paradigm of corporate responsibility—one where businesses act as catalysts for sustainable and inclusive development.