Overlooking The Not-So-Routine? An Analysis of Everyday Ingenuity in the Social Entrepreneurship Research

Abstract This study used qualitative discourse analysis to explore how researchers use the concept of ingenuity to understand the everyday work of social entrepreneurs. Data were drawn from a sample of 69 research articles published across 41 academic journals between 1998 and 2018. The findings showed ingenuity to be an underdeveloped concept in the social entrepreneurship literature and revealed a paucity of research on the everyday work performed by social entrepreneurs. A framework for studying the work of social entrepreneurs at the “scale of the everyday” through the lens of ingenuity is proposed, and recommendations for future research are provided.