Articles

Today, innovation is one of the key concepts of our vocabulary, a value and an injunction. How did we get here? For centuries, the concept was pejorative and contested. This article documents the history of the concept over the centuries and how social innovation contributed to giving the concept a higher status.

The concept of innovation has become more and more important for societies to cope with the great societal challenges, while technological innovation encounters limitations in resolving them. To understand the variety and diversity of innovations in society and to cope with the challenges we need a new understanding of innovation focusing on social innovation and the capacity of the whole society.

Although it has experienced recent improvements, Australia has historically lagged behind many OECD countries and several of its regional neighbours in its commercial innovation performance. While there is a considerable social innovation activity in Australia, it is not well-enabled by policy frameworks, and is often not documented or evaluated.

One way of systemically developing new social practices is to use the social innovation labs (SI lab) approach. The term SI lab describes a variety of different organisational forms and methods – social entrepreneurship hubs, public policy labs, change labs, and many others – with the intention to create socially innovative initiatives.

The development of a theoretically sound concept is an important challenge to unfold the potential of social innovation. Defining social innovation as a new combination or figuration of social practices allows integrating the many different (and sometimes conflicting) meanings of social innovation and offers a new perspective on the multiplicity of the concept of social innovation. This also offers the opportunity for a better understanding of the relationship of social and technological innovation and lays the foundation for further scientific research.

Social innovation is the third leg in a stool of resilient societies. Building resilience requires reducing vulnerability of excluded and endangered populations. Social innovation draws on the diversity and richness of these, sometimes marginalized, populations to find novel solutions to intractable problems.

Networks and cooperation are vital for social innovation (SI). Policy which stimulates the development of SI ecosystems is likely to encourage the sustainability of social innovations. This chapter focuses on Western Europe, detailing how networks, individuals and groups are the main drivers in social innovation and providing examples of such networks.

Social Innovations within Education and Lifelong Learning are still under value, their potential has to be unlocked!

Social innovation has become much more visible over the last few years. But how much has really been achieved? And how will it prosper in a potentially more hostile climate dominated by populist politics and social resentments? This chapter takes stock of what has and hasn’t been achieved over the last decade and sets out a roadmap for the one ahead.