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Suntae Kim

Assistant Professor
Management & Organization, Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

Ethnography of Entrepreneurship Development Project for North Korean Refugees

Date: Friday, May 9, 2025
Time: 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Location: Bronfman building, Room 310

Abstract

Like any other entrepreneurial activities, social innovation involves inherent risks. The process of social innovation is often marked by a constant struggle against this fundamental uncertainty, whereby social entrepreneurs, just like their commercial counterparts, must constantly pivot. Simultaneously, social innovation is often not a lone journey of social entrepreneurs; it often involves active participation by and nurtures empowerment of beneficiaries. This makes interaction between social entrepreneurs and beneficiaries a key part of the social innovation process. Therefore, social entrepreneurs not only have to navigate the thick uncertainty but must do so via constantly interacting with their beneficiaries. Despite this, the current research provides few insights into the intersection between the two—we know little about how social entrepreneurs and beneficiaries interact with each other to navigate entrepreneurial uncertainties, and how such interaction shapes the unfolding process of social value creation. We address this shortcoming by drawing upon a South Korean social innovation project that nurtures entrepreneurship-based self-sufficiency among North Korean Refugees (NKRs, hereafter). Drawing on in-depth ethnographic data of the project, we are currently analyzing key interactions between South Korean social entrepreneurs and NKR beneficiaries that shaped the project’s struggle to navigate the entrepreneurial uncertainty. By doing so, we expect to advance our understanding around how entrepreneur-beneficiary interaction can impact entrepreneurial pivots and ultimate social value creation in social innovation projects.