Social franchising and social farming, for promoting the co-production of knowledge and values: the IBF case

Abstract

Social franchising is primarily a method to transfer knowledge from one established enterprise to another that wants to achieve the same social and economic goals. The social franchise is an adaptation of a commercial franchise in which the developer of a successfully tested social concept (franchisor) ena-bles others (franchisees) to replicate the model using the tested system and the brand name to achieve a social benefit. In fact, social franchising combines social objectives (sharing learning and methodologies for greater social impact) with economic objectives. This link is the reason that many consider social fran-chising to be a potential tool for the growth of social farming initiatives that introduce the co-production of private and public values. The paper opens with an overview of social franchising. Then it explains meth-odology used for the creation of social franchising for social farming (IBF) and discusses how this tool can be able to facilitate social innovation in agriculture