Beatriz Bonilla Berrocal, Annalinda De Rosa, and Valentina Auricchio
In the business landscape, there is an increasing recognition of the role that innovation plays in fostering long-term social impact. Demonstrating social value and positive impact is no longer just an internal priority, becoming a key differentiator for companies aiming to obtain funding and legitimacy. Yet, for many small and medium enterprises, proving their social value remains challenging, facing difficulties in assessing their impact on society and in placing value on intangible outcomes and softer values of their initiatives. Many widely accepted impact assessment tools are technical-oriented, resource-intensive, and reliant on specialised expertise, making them often inaccessible to organisations without significant financial investment.
Corporate purpose is not a static concept, being shaped by the structure, values, and objectives of each company. Businesses span a diverse spectrum of profit-driven enterprises, social enterprises, and non-profit organisations, where the understanding of social impact, value and innovation is often fluid and context-dependent. The concept of impact is often framed as internal or external to the organisation, being conceived as the internal benefits provided to employees, fostering a culture of innovation and well-being, or externally, as their engagement with communities through projects that drive social change, either independently or in collaboration with stakeholders.
Exploring how these different interpretations influence the discourse around social innovation and impact measurement creates understanding about how SMEs embed purpose within their strategies. This missing conceptual framework for social value and innovation leads to an increasing conceptualisation of voluntary and routinary actions as a form of social innovation, where its impact and value are not part of the organisation’s overall social motivation.
Capturing and measuring impact requires embedding evaluation processes into an organisation’s management structure, where the challenge lies in ensuring that impact assessment does not become a compliance-driven exercise but rather a designed feedback mechanism that informs strategic decision-making and enhances the continuous innovation process.
This paper aims to highlight the case of purpose-driven SMEs, as businesses that aim to integrate impact evaluation into their practices, and how they navigate this complexity. While impact tools provide legitimacy, they are not always feasible for SMEs to adapt it to their practices due to their cost and technical demands. An alternative to these methods is presented by design discipline and its participatory and creative approach to evaluation. As smaller businesses often lack the capacity to implement rigorous frameworks, the exploration of participatory evaluation methodologies as an alternative to traditional impact assessment tools to actively engage multiple stakeholders propose an option into defining what social impact means in an smaller setting and how it should be measured in consideration to its particular context, where unlike traditional metrics, which may require external audits, participatory approaches allow companies to develop context-specific, adaptable frameworks that align with their mission and operational realities.
Additionally, this paper aims to highlight the importance of the design approach in balancing quantitative and qualitative data, insights and metrics. While numerical indicators and tools are useful for demonstrating progress, qualitative impact narratives are equally valuable, offering depth and contextual understanding, capturing data that cannot be easily quantified. Examining how SMEs navigate the challenges of measuring and demonstrating impact helps to understand that while structured evaluation frameworks play an important role in fostering accountability, they are not universally applicable. Instead, a shift towards participatory and adaptive impact evaluation led by a design perspective can enable more SMEs to integrate purpose-driven strategies effectively. Bridging the gap between corporate purpose, social innovation, and impact measurement highlights how businesses can sustain their contributions to society while ensuring that their impact remains both measurable and meaningful.
Keywords: Social impact, innovation, evaluation, SMEs, creativity, participatory design