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Cultural Entrepreneurship In Legitimizing Social Innovation: Cultural Reconfiguration Of Sex-Tech

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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/08/2022
<mark>Journal</mark>Academy of Management Proceedings
Issue number1
Volume2022
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date6/07/22
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Recent scholarship draws attention to social innovation undertaken by entrepreneurs to improve the lives and wellbeing of marginalized populations. Within this context, women entrepreneurs, traditionally marginalized and working within cultural milieus that eschew innovative products by women for women, confront an uphill battle, especially when working with tainted cultural resources. However, as our inquiry of the initiatives undertaken by sex-tech women entrepreneurs unveils, these entrepreneurs can engage in cultural entrepreneurship to innovate and reconfigure the meanings associated with their products to legitimize them as social innovations. Data show entrepreneurs: (a) designing and commercializing embodied products to address unmet needs, (b) engaging in discursive practices to create a new language, and (c) engaging in social action while aligning with other social movements. These practices together led to a cultural reconfiguration, i.e., shifting the meaning of sex-tech products from immoral to a health and wellness devices, resulting in the legitimation of sex tech as a social innovation and conversion of tainted cultural resources into valuable ones.