Social innovations on the rise
Social Innovation has increasingly been attracting attention in recent years. As a novel approach to address complex global problems of health, social care, education, energy, and environmental policies, it has been embraced by stakeholders and communities on the local, regional, and national level. As the Atlas of Social Innovation has shown, countless approaches and successful initiatives have emerged in an international context that demonstrate the strengths and potential of social innovation in overcoming societal challenges.
Social innovations are emerging in all societal sectors: in civil society (e.g. urban agriculture), in politics (e.g. parental leave), and in the economy (e.g. microcredits). Social innovations are omnipresent and contribute to the development of new solutions and social change. The establishment of new social practices plays a prominent role when it comes to making mobility more environmentally friendly, diseases less frightening or the energy transition more successful. We also observe a re-discovery of once widespread practices, as is the case for sharing initiatives or multi-generational housing.
An overarching characteristic of the initiatives is the systematic involvement of users and citizens. Many initiatives aim to empower stakeholders, increase their skills and give them agency. There are various forms of user involvement, from developing or improving the solution, providing feedback, suggestions and knowledge, to adapting and re-framing it for other contexts. Social Innovations promote and utilize the innovation potential of society as a whole.
Social innovations and public policy
The dynamics in the development and dissemination of social innovation in the international arena are also reflected in the increasing number of (public) programs that initiate and support social innovation at local, regional, national, global level. Interest in social innovation in the political arena has grown, particularly since the mid-2000s. While the promotion of social innovation had previously been largely limited to the support of social entrepreneurs by well-funded private organizations, social innovation has increasingly become a topic of broader public policy.
Many governments in Europe and beyond recognize the importance of social innovation in the development of a sustainable innovation policy. The Atlas of Social Innovation describes the spread of social innovation as a universal concept in more than 20 regional and country studies and reflects the variety of policy approaches chosen (e.g. Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, New Zealand and the USA).
The European Union – important driver of social innovations
One of the most important drivers of this development was the European Union (EU). At the programmatic level of Europe’s research and innovation policy, a new perspective on innovation has been emerging since 1992. In the EU research framework programs, the social has been substantially upgraded in relation to the importance to technology-oriented research and innovation. This development has gained additional momentum during and after the financial crisis. The “Europe 2020” strategy and its flagship initiatives already take into account the particular challenges of promoting social innovation. In the European research programme Horizon 2020 (2014-2020), a new generation of EU-funded projects has contributed to the theoretical foundation of social innovation research.
The topic again gained momentum with the von der Leyen Commission (2019-2024) in which the objectives of green and digital transformation in a fair and inclusive manner have social innovation at their core. At the same time, the EU has developed numerous policy programmes and financial tools to promote social innovation.
Social innovations on the national level
Over the last 20 years, national governments in different countries of the world have started initiatives to design and implement policies for social innovation. They have created and supported agencies and foundations, have changed regulations, have created new legal forms and funding sources and have taken measures to address social problems and help social innovators in bringing their ideas to life.
On the European member state level, Portugal is the most advanced and ambitious example, both budget-wise and in light of social innovation’s importance within the national innovation strategy. The country, during its severe debt crisis in the late 2000s, decided to make social innovation and social entrepreneurship key priorities of its 2014-2020 strategy, investing massively to finance social innovation and social entrepreneurship projects; to promote the necessary ecosystem for its future sustainability, creating a social investment market. Portugal, in this sense, can serve as a blueprint for a social innovation strategy aiming at ecosystem development on the national and regional level alike.
At the same time, Germany has taken steps to integrate social innovation into its national innovation strategy and has made efforts which can be considered pioneering. The topic has gained national momentum, also driven by a small but vibrant community that has been researching social innovations and supporting their development and dissemination. Against this background, efforts to open up national, regional and local innovation policies and to develop a social innovation policy in its own right have intensified.
Overall, the focus of German innovation policy has shifted from the market potential of individual fields of technology to the social need for sustainable solutions and their realisation. Accordingly, numerous initiatives and programs have been developed in various ministries in recent years that aim to create favourable framework conditions to promote social innovation.
An important step in the development of a comprehensive social innovation policy is the Federal Government’s National Strategy for Social Innovation and Enterprises for the Common Good, which was adopted in September 2023 and whose implementation is being monitored in an interdepartmental dialogue. In this strategy, social innovations are not only considered to be of equal value to technological innovations, and the importance of the interplay between these two forms of innovation in tackling the major challenges society is facing is emphasised as mentioned above.
“In view of deep-reaching social, ecological, technological and geopolitical change, we need people to help shape our future, to provide new and diverse paths towards the necessary transitions. Social innovations and social enterprises make an indispensable contribution towards this. They enable us to cope with increasingly complex challenges, to safeguard prosperity effectively and sustainably in line with the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and to build a just and resilient society in which nature and the environment, commerce and the needs of the inhabitants coincide.” (BMWK, BMBF 2023, p. 2).
The emergence of a research community
The growing importance of the concept in the social and political debate has also led to intensified academic research on the topic. Since the 1980s, field-based approaches have increasingly emerged in international research that aim to treat social innovations as an independent type of innovation and make them accessible as a subject of empirical studies.
A great challenge for contemporary innovation research lies in analysing the potential of social innovation in the creation of new social practices that enhance an inclusive, equitable, democratic, participative, and above all socially anchored future. Beyond such a policy-oriented and normative perspective on social innovations, however, it is important to conceive them as an analytical category in research on processes of change and to integrate them systematically in concepts and analyses of transformative social change.
Challenges for the future
Social innovation has become a universal concept with high momentum. The awareness of and support for social innovation is increasing: In many countries, the promotion of social innovation has now served as a driver and opportunity for various actors to develop new ways of working, access new sources of funding, and leverage supporting infrastructures. It has entered the debate about the future direction of innovation policy as such. Thus, the contours of a New Innovation Paradigm are emerging that adequately captures the diversity of innovations in society. Beyond economic impact, it focuses on the contribution to overcoming societal challenges.
At the same time, there is a growing awareness of the scale of the challenges modern societies are facing, as well as the complexity of innovation processes. Like technological innovations, successful social innovations are based on a variety of prerequisites and require suitable infrastructures and resources. Only through the interaction of actors can the development and dissemination of new social practices be initiated and processes of socio-ecological transformation toward sustainable forms of economic activity and coexistence be generated. This implies a new role for public policy and government in creating appropriate frameworks and support structures, the integration of resources by business and civil society, and supportive action by science and universities.
In this sense, social innovation can be seen as an important driver for change and social transformation that is becoming increasingly important in view of the failure of the market and politics. Transformation describes a comprehensive unleashing of this potential in which a multitude of practices are changed, combined, further developed and finally institutionalised against all retention, impediments and resistance. In this sense, social change and societal transformation are a multidimensional, complex and contingent process in which a large number of actors are co-creatively involved.
The Social Innovation Exchange Network (SIX) is since many years an important driver of the Global community. SIX connects organisations, sectors, communities and nations to build capabilities and create opportunities for collaboration. It connects people and discover the collective power to change their societies for the better. With its focus and strong roots in society, SIX is an important partner for science and politics.
