In Norway, more than half of all companies are part of an entrepreneurial network or a collaboration platform for social enterprises or innovation. The most common networks are Ferd, SoCentral, and the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, but Church City Mission, a non-profit organisation that cooperates with public authorities and other organisations to provide various care services for vulnerable groups, is also a key link for many of the businesses. Cooperation with actors such as these enables many social enterprises to more effectively achieve their goals because it increases access to competences that facilitate the collaboration with local and regional authorities. A majority of businesses are also influencing political processes important to realising their goals, where they are most often in contact with the municipality (administration and politicians; (Eimhjemmen and Loga 2016; Kvam 2016). According to the literature, there are four  primary suggestions for enabling impact start-ups to accomplish their socially innovative goals. 

Concrete dialogue activities: Inviting the public authorities to a general meeting with two-way communication, preferably before preparing the procurement documents, lets start-ups in the market show what they have to offer. Here, the public sector could promote their needs and allow suppliers to provide input on possible solutions. It is a benefit both for the impact start-up and the public sector to obtain as much information from each other as possible before initiating a procurement process (Seljebotn et al. 2018). 

Written input: Impact start-ups can be given the opportunity to provide written input on how they will solve the identified need.  A well-written description of the solutions can feed into the public sector tender documents. In some cases, this will challenge and stimulate the impact start-ups to ensure innovative and well-defined solutions (Seljebotn et al. 2018).

User journey and service design: When the social impact start-ups use elements from service design and/or user journeys in the planning phase, it enhances credibility in the solutions they present. The methods to map users’ experiences can be done by inviting suppliers to workshops and by sending out surveys. Experts in the field argue that the linkage between the product or service and the users are critical for success and thus for funding the social start-up (Ferd 2019). 

Request feedback: An important part of the process is for social enterprises to receive feedback, both from end-users and from those in charge of public procurement. Input about the written proposal, service design, and conclusions from the dialogue activities are relevant for impact start-ups to continuously strengthen their vision, management, and financial model (Eimhjemmen and Loga 2016; Seljebotn et al. 2018).