SP6 examines the significance of the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship for the transformation of rural public service infrastructure, focusing on the critical infrastructure ‚food’. In addition, explicit references to other rural infrastructure services are analyzed, e.g., in the areas of care (nursing, childcare), education, and culture.

The focus of the subproject is on social entrepreneurs as niche players who find innovative solutions to current social or ecological problems and act as pioneers of change. They make a double contribution to transformation – in the agricultural and food system and in relation to rural public service infrastructures -, which has not yet been taken into account in spatial science research. This creates an innovative, conceptual interface between agri-food studies on the one hand and rural infrastructure and entrepreneurship research on the other.

The process of emergence, implementation, and potential dissemination of new transformative practices for securing sustainability-oriented and future-proof public services are analyzed based on three detailed case studies in rural Germany. Agricultural initiatives, which are all part of the critical infrastructure ‚food’ and produce food as well as having multiple content-related links to other public service infrastructures, are investigated. The starting point for the case selection is an exemplary agricultural initiative in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as reference region of AdaptInfra.

Within the research group, SP6 addresses the cross-cutting theme social entrepreneurship. In this context, pioneers of change in other areas of public service infrastructures and their practices are identified and investigated.