Social enterprise and disruption innovation: evaluating the role of Rumie's free educational software in seven developing economies

This paper reviews the provision of free educational hardware and software provided by one social enterprise to under resourced children in seven countries. The social and economic challenges faced by this social enterprise are highlighted; the implications for social enterprise of adopting disruptive innovation and of blended learning techniques in an educational context; and the importance of evaluating projects in terms of research methods. Three research questions were posed: what is the educational benefit of using Rumie? [Value dimension]; what criteria can be used to evaluate the use of Rumie in the field? [The capability dimension]; what feedback is there from students, teachers, etc. [The collaboration dimension]. Quantitative usage data and qualitative feedback were collected. Findings show that the tablets help improve pupils math and reading abilities and the educal entertainment does not appear to be at the expense of learning about more traditional subjects. Feedback from teachers and pupils appears to be extremely positive. More specific lessons learned about research methods in evaluating social entrepreneurship projects in developing economies are identified; and implications for adapting the theory of disruptive innovation.

Copyright The Authors, 2016. The published paper is included in the Middlesex University Research Repository with permission from the publisher Academic Conferences and Publishing International (ACPI)

Paper first published by Academic Conferences and Publishing International (ACPI) as: Moon, C., Kavanagh, A., Jeffrey, J., Gebbels, J. and Korsgaard, K., 2016. Social enterprise and disruption innovation: evaluating the role of Rumie's free educational software in seven developing economies. Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ECIE 2016), pp. 485-495. Print ISSN: 2049-1050, Print ISBN: 978-1-911218-07-4