Towards the Equitable Blue Economy: Quad Helix Innovation for Social Entrepreneurship

Oceans are central to Indonesia’s prosperity through economic activities, with more than 17,500 islands, 108,000 kilometers of coastline, and three-quarters of its territory at sea. Indonesia’s ocean economy is worth over $256 billion annually, more than one quarter of the national economy. Being the source of food and livelihood to the substantial portion of population, oceans have potential to achieve major sustainable goals of eliminating hunger and poverty. Around five million of Indonesians fishermen live in coastal areas and rely on the ocean for incomes and nutrition, however, these communities are amongst the country’s poorest. Although the blue economy policy has been launched in 2021 by the government which includes quota-based measured fishing and development of marine, and coastal fishery, we argue that addressing social benefits and equity for traditional fishermen, is necessary to design and implement as an integral part of the policy, alongside environmental and production concerns. This paper examines the significance of social entrepreneurship by cooperative to foster community development through further social value creation. The model theorizes community development processes namely, community support for co-operative, co-operative readiness, perceived benefit, and quad helix innovation. A concerted effort of quad helix innovation (academicians, industry, government and community) is crucial to work on cooperative development. It contributes to knowledge by illustrating the interactions between fishermen’ social enterprises and intervention in the upstream value chain which enablers empowering lives of marginalized people.