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Social innovation (SI) research tends to understand rural SI processes as collective initiatives of equally engaged, supportive, and like-minded people. However, recent research has indicated that SI projects often benefit from dedicated key players who find support in their communities but also must deal with resistance and barriers. Against this backdrop, this article explores the figure of the key player in SI research and exposes the patterns of rural SI processes with the empirical cases of two small communities in Germany that jointly created rural infrastructure systems, thus seeking emancipation from remote political and economic control and marginalization. Using the empirical cases, we tested and specified a heuristic framework of key players that combines analytical dimensions at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. According to our findings, the heuristic framework is appropriate for analyzing key players in rural SI processes. Notably, we show that SI processes benefit from assertive key players and strong communities capable of joint action. Both are crucial for dealing with internal opposition and overcoming external hurdles that appear when novel approaches irritate familiar solutions and routines. • Rural social innovation processes benefit from key players. • Heuristic concept of key players proves its worth in empirical analysis. • Rural key players are intermediaries between communities and supra-regional networks. • Rural social innovations combine a novel solution and new forms of social interaction. • Rural social innovations counteract political and economic marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of how social enterprises foster social innovation in rural regions remains largely unexplored. In this paper, I develop the assumption that the embeddedness of social enterprises in rural communities and their ability to connect rural communities with supra-regional networks and decision makers are crucial preconditions for generating and fostering social innovation in the countryside. By applying the social network approach and a cross-case analysis of social enterprises in rural regions of Austria and Poland, I show how rural social enterprises mobilise ideas, resources and support from external sources not primarily for their own benefit but for that of their rural region. As embedded intermediaries , they contribute to transformational change and wellbeing, albeit they are only one of many forces that drive rural development. • The paper presents a cross-case analysis of two rural social enterprises in Poland and Austria. • It unfolds how social enterprises generate innovative solutions for challenges in rural regions. • It shows that the innovative power of rural social enterprises derives from recontextualisation. • An 'embedded intermediary' model for rural social enterprises is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]