Innovation is not just an economic and or technological tool; it is also a social phenomenon. This paper draws together the concepts of creating shared value, the stakeholder theory, and socially oriented innovation to research companies' decisions on asserting socially related objectives when innovating. We examine the extent to which this decision process is bounded by constraints related to information and the characteristics of innovation. To perform this study we used a dataset that monitors the innovation activities of companies. This study offers an empirical analysis of the influence on firms' social innovation orientation. The empirical analysis supports the theoretical framework and identifies the firm's community links as key factors in developing new innovations, process and product‐oriented, which have an impact on the social‐innovation orientation of the firm. Additionally, it shows how the setting up of social goals when innovating is affected by the information source and the innovation mode being developed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment