Social innovation, An ephemeral concept or something more substantial?
By: Ginny Lee
In our globalised world it is easy to go onto the internet to find out information about anything and everything. When you type in ‘social innovation’ into Google, the definition is very wide reaching, nebulous and all encompassing.
Where should we go to find out about social innovation?
On Wikipedia, the definition of ‘social innovation’ is as follows:
Social innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds – from working conditions and education to community development and health – and that extend and strengthen civil society.
The term has overlapping meanings. It can be used to refer to social processes of innovation, such as open source methods and techniques. Alternatively it refers to innovations which have a social purpose – like microcredit or distance learning. The concept can also be related to social entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship is not necessarily innovative, but it can be a means of innovation) and it also overlaps with innovation in public policy and governance. Social innovation can take place within government, within the for-profit sector, or within the nonprofit sector (also known as the third sector), or in the space between them. Research has focused on the types of platforms needed to facilitate such cross-sector collaborative social innovation.[1] Social innovation is gaining visibility within academia.[2]
The difficulty of defining what social innovation is has been one of the challenges that we encountered when trying to communicate to others what we are trying to do with our project, which has been commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation. We are in the midst of scanning the world for new processes and ways of doing things that could potentially be replicated and scaled up in different parts of the world to create social change. Our objective is to come up with a list of new methods of social change (which we believe is linked to innovation) that have the potential to become the next ‘crowdsourcing’, ‘user-centred design’ or ‘collaborative competitions’ through scanning the world for stories and projects.
The work that we’re trying to do here with What Works?, which is to surface and grow the field of innovation, is an interesting one. From the outset we wanted to engage with organisations and people beyond the ‘social innovation’ field as we know it. One of the obvious groups to engage in social innovation, we thought, was the international development field. There are so many interesting projects on the ground and many of the organisations are doing really interesting work in local areas yet, they seldom use the language of ‘social innovation’. This is why we chose to use the term ‘social change’ rather than ‘social innovation’ because we needed to articulate our project in a way that is understandable to everyone. We believe a lot more people understand the meaning of ‘social change’ and generally don’t need to go into any lengthy discussions about the meaning as ‘social innovation’ often incites.
The project has been really interesting and the insights so far have been fascinating. Through the initial conversations we have been having with experts from around the world from Ezio Manzini of the DESIS Network to Chris Cusano of Ashoka Singapore, what emerged was really interesting. In Italy, social innovation is mainly directed at the third sector and cooperatives more specifically. In Africa, social innovation is more about social enterprise and supporting social entrepreneurs. In South Korea, social innovation is linked with galvanising civil society and capturing the spirit of citizen activism. In 2011, the European Commission launched the Social Innovation Europe initiative to make Europe one of the most innovative regions of the world. It seems as though countries and organisations all understand social innovation slightly differently and apply social innovation in different ways. It really is indicative of the fact that cultural contexts really shape the way that social innovation is taken up in different countries and different regions, which based on needs and as well as gaps.
From the conversations that we have been having with people, the development of a field of social innovation and some more systematic understanding of the field through definitions as well as metrics and methods seem to be something that people are longing for. Initiatives like the Global Innovation Academy, Pop Tech and ANIS are emerging because people want to find out more about social innovation and how to affect change in a way that has already been proven successful in other areas/countries/sectors.
The appetite to learn about social innovation and learning from projects that have worked is really strong and the desire for a field of social innovation is growing. But there is no one place to go for tools, methods, metrics, as well as stories of failures and successes for social innovation. The Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) is one place that is trying to bring ‘social innovation’ practitioners together but there is a need for a more uniform language and a set of methodologies to be forged. The Young Foundation is writing a report on metrics for the European Commission which will be published in the Spring 2012 which will start to explore measuring impact and assessment in the field of social innovation in the European context. This is one of many first forays into trying to understand the complex field of social innovation.
Everyone we have spoken to has been really excited about this project not only because we’re trying to find the next ‘crowdsourcing’ or ‘user-centered design’ but because we’re expanding the field of social innovation to include those who have yet not been included in the discussions in the social innovation. We’re talking to scholars, international development organisations, as well as the well known players in the field such as Helsinki Design Lab and the EUCLID network. We are trying to make the concept clearer to those outside the social innovation field and hopefully adding to a complex emerging field.
The codification is part of the process of making social innovation a ‘field of study’. The work that we’re doing to open the doors to those who are not familiar with social innovation is important. Hopefully the methods we uncover and our process of understanding the field of social innovation will enable all of us to adapt more readily and speedily to the unique challenges that the 21st century will hurl upon us.
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Link: http://findingwhatworks.org/2012/01/06/reflections-on-the-project-so-far/
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