This research deals with organizational tensions linked to the emergence of social innovation projects since they are useful in understanding complex organizational phenomena, particularly in a social enterprise context (Bouchard & Michaud, 2015). Based on the creativity traits of social innovation and entrepreneurship this article aims to fill two gaps related to the need for a better understanding of the origins and setup of paradoxical tensions at the starting point of multi-stakeholder ventures. Thus, through this work we focus on tensions at the inter-organizational level in order to better integrate some characteristics of social enterprises, such as a strong anchorage in their territory and their interdependence with a set of stakeholders in order to insist on the open and collective natures of social innovation (Harrisson & Vézina, 2006; Muller & Tanguy, 2018). In addition, most of the paradox studies seek to bring new strategies to cope with paradox or take advantage of it, we want to go more upstream and grasp the origins of tensions. In other words, we promote the acknowledgement of tensions from the very beginning of entrepreneurial projects to prevent disconnection between the core features of social innovation project and the paradoxical situation the leaders will face during its development. Through the case study of a participatory device, a call for project, promoting collective ventures by integrating multiple interests, this work aims 1) to increase the knowledge about the emergence phase of social ventures in order to understand how tensions are created at this point, 2) to highlight the mediating role of non-humans in the studied ventures. The data collection strategy mobilizes documentary resources, interviews and observations with different stakeholders impacted by the device intervention. The results show an unprecedented device balancing tensions among stakeholders and prompting entrepreneur’s awareness of paradoxes (applying entrepreneurs were quite heterogeneous regarding their ability to respond performing tensions, and they were challenged to co-construct an inclusive project able to integrate multiple identities). Our study reveals the significance of the performing and belonging tensions from the ideation process, confirming Dufays’s (2017) research on collective entrepreneurship. By focusing on an inter-organizational device we were able to grasp those tensions at multiple levels, confronting tensions related to the device itself and to the project development as experienced by social entrepreneurs, we identified paradoxes within Smith and Lewis’ categorization (2011, 2013). We discuss the role of managerial device aimed at launching social ventures specifically and how these devices can reveal tensions to entrepreneurs and potentially impact the course of their project development.
