Balancing Market Versus Social Strategic Orientations in Socio-tech Ventures as Part of the Technology Innovation Adoption Process – Examples from the Global Healthcare Sector

Socio-tech ventures - entrepreneurial firms that aim to create social value by employing technological innovation as part of their key value proposition - are a rapidly growing category of organizations. They occupy a place of intersection between technology ventures and social enterprises and present an important and emerging area of research. Socio-tech ventures face the challenge of balancing social and market strategic orientations similar to social enterprises. However, their simultaneous status as technology ventures is likely to further complicate this balancing act and remains an unexplored dynamic in the extant literature. Strategic orientation is an important consideration since it impacts the activities and resource allocations of a venture that can influence its performance. Drawing from the technology innovation and technological and social entrepreneurship literature, this paper addresses this gap by developing a conceptual model and propositions, with examples from the global health sector, about factors related to the technology adoption process that can influence the social-market strategic orientation balance of socio-tech ventures. This model considers the influence of the tenure and innovation stance of venture founders/managers, the complexity and trialability of the technological innovation, the legal structure of the venture, and interconnectedness within the social networks.