‘Shaken, but not stirred’: six decades defining social innovation (original) (raw)
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2010
In the face of increasing pressure to change and adapt to the needs of highly competitive business markets, it is not unusual for management to focus on the commercial payback on technical innovations and to downplay social processes. Typically, company survival is explained in terms of an „innovation imperative‟ where new products and services are part of the dynamic business environment for securing and maintaining competitive advantage. Historically, the focus has been on how to translate innovations in science and technology into commercial applications. We contend that whilst largely downplayed, social processes have always been essential to understanding innovation and that with the growing public concern with societal well-being, there is an increasing interest in the broader elements associated with social innovation. From a selective historical examination of innovation, we examine the conceptual links and various attempts to delineate the „social‟ and „technical‟ aspects o...
Discourses and Practices of Social Innovation - Between Plurality and Clarity
SOCIOLOGIA E POLITICHE SOCIALI, 2018
This Special Issue navigates through the plurality of working definitions and applications of Social Innovation in the international and Italian contexts demonstrating the conceptual variety and the problem of analytical clarity of the concept. The diversity of approaches creates misconceptions, confusion and often inappropriate use of the concept reducing its broader societal, historical and cultural meaning. However, this plurality even if problematic demonstrates the value of the concept especially regarding its use on re-defining and resolving social problems on the urban scale. Following the theoretical developments of the contemporary debate, the issue initially presents an overview of the use of Social Innovation in research projects of social sciences and humanities in Europe. Consequently, by relying on a series of reflections based on case-study research it highlights the role and particular uses of the concept and its implications on territorial governance. There it becomes visible how Social Innovation is mobilized as a form of mediation between governance dynamics across scales and cultural, political, social, institutional norms.
Towards a theory of transformative social innovation: A relational framework and 12 propositions
Research Policy, 2020
This paper responds to the need in innovation research for conceptual clarity and solid theory on social innovation (SI). The paper conceptualizes SI as changing social relations, involving new ways of doing, knowing, framing and organizing, and theorizes transformative social innovation (TSI) as the process of SI challenging, altering, or replacing dominant institutions in a specific social-material context. Three advances towards TSI theory are proposed. First, we reflect epistemologically on the challenges of theory-building, and propose an appropriate research design and methodology. Middle-range theory is developed through iteration between theoretical insights and comparative empirical study of 20 transnational SI networks and about 100 associated initiatives. Second, we synthesize various innovation theories and social theories into a relational framework that articulates the distributed agency and institutional hybridization involved. Third, we formulate twelve propositions on the emergence of SI initiatives, on the development of SI ecosystems, on institutionalization processes, and on the historical shaping of SI. The paper ends with a critical assessment of the advances made, also identifying further challenges for TSI theory and practice.
Editorial Synthesis: Methodological Challenges in Social Innovation Research
European Public & Social Innovation Review
In recent years, there have been substantial efforts towards theory-building and conceptual clarification in social innovation (SI) research further contributing to its consolidation as a research field. Taking a different angle, this special issue aims to contribute to such consolidation by introducing greater reflexivity about the underlying methodologies and logics of inquiry. It features eight contributions from the main methodological orientations in SI research, namely systematic knowledge development and action-oriented research that discuss particular methodological challenges and advances. This editorial synthesis serves to take stock and elicit their broader significance for SI research along the normative, temporal and comparative dimensions of methodology choices. Dimensions, which are salient to SI research without being tied to any specific methodological tradition. As such, they reflect our aim to transcend the methodological fragmentation of the SI research field and open up a methodological discussion through a methodologically pluralist stance.
Social innovation research: a new stage in innovation analysis?
The International Handbook on Social Innovation, 2013
We challenge the conventional approach to innovation by situating social innovation in a broader societal logic and developing a methodology for SI research that is consistent with that logic. We do so in four steps. First, we comment on some key authors and themes in the social scientific literature on SI, the factors provoking it, and the processes embodying it. Second, although the mainstream literature has addressed SI agency and processes, sometimes abstractly, sometimes concretely, at different spatial scales and with regard to different levels of collective action, it largely neglects the macro-social dimensions of social innovation. Third, we examine whether SI analysis can follow the path of innovation analysis in science and technology, innovation economics, management science, etc. Fourth, we offer some basic methodological criteria that define the scope of, and most suitable methods for SI research.
Definition and theory in social innovation
Social innovation is a term used globally to describe and identify quite different activities. While it’s a term that everyone likes to use, what it refers to not clear. This paper explores different definitional approaches or intentions – legitimating, theoretical, action-reflection, broad and distinctive – and considers why a definition of social innovation is important and what the crucial ingredients, informed more by practice than theory, might be. Following lessons learnt from postmodernity and critical theory, social marketing, democracy, governance and social entrepreneurship, we arrive at a definition that is value-laden, distinctive and focused - from inception to impact - on equality, justice and empowerment.
Social Innovation: Drawing Lines Around the Appropriative Usage by Mainstream Sectors
VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations
The conceptual malleability of the notion of social innovation has resulted in the appropriation of the concept in various sectors. The goal of the paper is to provide a critical view of such appropriation. We contend that this appropriation often includes the usage of the concept to advance agendas away from or opposed to that of the common good. This paper evaluates such problematic usage by identifying the distinguishing and core aspects of social innovation. These include the social need-meeting dimension geared towards marginalised or disadvantaged communities which is enacted via processes of social and/or power relations shifts of these groups. The paper locates the current trajectory of social innovation discourse to identify that it is in the actions of grassroots third sector initiatives, where the democratic side of social innovation is conserved, and calls for its advancement to prevent exploitation of disadvantaged communities and hogging of resources away from initiati...