Benjamin Gidron
founder and director of the Israeli Center for Third sector Research (ICTR) at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel
Title: Impact Tech Startups: A conceptual framework,machine-learningbased methodology and future research directions
Biography
Biography: Benjamin Gidron
Abstract
The Impact Tech Startup (ITS) is a new, rapidly developing type of organizational category.
Based on an entrepreneurial approach and technological foundations, ITSs adopt innovative strategies
to tackle a variety of social and environmental challenges within a for-profit framework and are
usually backed by private investment. This new organizational category is thus far not discussed
in the academic literature. The paper first provides a conceptual framework for studying this
organizational category, as a combination of aspects of social enterprises and startup businesses. It
then proposes a machine learning (ML)-based algorithm to identify ITSs within startup databases. The
UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are used as a referential framework for characterizing
ITSs, with indicators relating to those 17 goals that qualify a startup for inclusion in the impact
category. The paper concludes by discussing future research directions in studying ITSs as a distinct
organizational category through the usage of the ML methodology.