The business model evolution of social entrepreneurship organizations: the case of digital startup in France
In order to avoid the mission drift, the startups with a social purpose should anticipate their business model’s evolution. Many of them are struggling to achieve this goal, and the current state of the art offers few benchmarks. This article presents the results of an in-depth study based on 10 startups in the digital sector in France. The findings highlight several evolutions: 1) evolution of the value proposition by modifying the initial offer to adapt it to the needs of the target; 2) evolution by expanding the scope of activities according to whether the revenue model is financed by the user, or by a third party, with an approach combining planned and emerging actions; 3) organizational evolution to deal with the development of startups; 4) evolution of the revenue and cost model; and 5) evolution of the mission and the social impact, which result from the interaction between the different components.