“A fever for business”: Dutch joint stock companies

Katharine McGowan

The Evolution of Social Innovation

Building Resilience Through Transitions

Edited by Frances Westley, Katherine McGowan and Ola Tjörnbo

In a time where governments and civil society organizations are putting ever-greater stock in social innovation as a route to transformation, understanding what characterizes social innovation with transformative potential is important. Exciting and promising ideas seem to die out as often as they take flight, and market mechanisms, which go a long way towards contributing to successful technical innovations, play an insignificant role in social innovations. The cases in this book explore the evolution of successful social innovation through time, from the ideas which catalysed social and system entrepreneurs to create new processes, platforms, projects and programs to fundamental social shifts in culture, economics, laws and policies which occurred as a result. In doing so, the authors shed light on how to recognize transformative potential in the early stage innovations we see today.

Monograph Book

Published in print:: 29 Dec 2017

ISBN:: 9781786431141

eISBN:: 9781786431158

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786431158

Pages:: c 288

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Chapter 11: “A fever for business”: Dutch joint stock companies

Katharine McGowan

Monograph Chapter

Published:: 29 December 2017

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786431158.00016

Pages:: 196–217 (22 total)

Collection: Social and Political Science 2017

Abstract

In an inversion of what is usually presented as economic innovation, this case explores the social conditions that allowed the joint stock model to grow and flourish in the Northern Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries. Fuelling the period known as the Dutch Golden Age, the joint stock model allowed for significant, revolutionary shifts in resource flows, and ultimately reinforced an actual Dutch revolution against Spanish colonial authorities. This case illustrates the cross-sectoral requirements for a social innovation to take hold and scale, and how these shifts ripple throughout a society, leaving little untouched.

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