Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI
Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI

Project

Social innovations - (accompanying) instrument for solving social challenges?

The important role of social innovation (SI) for the development and successful implementation of system innovations to address societal challenges has been increasingly recognised in research and innovation policies since the first social innovation policy initiatives of the European Commission in the late 2000s and, subsequently, the explicit consideration of social innovation in the German High-tech Strategy. More recently, the interest in social innovation has been reinforced by the launch of five transformative missions as new element in the "Horizon Europe" Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

The interest in social innovation focused initially on the role it can potentially play for fostering the transformation of major socio-technical systems, for instance in energy supply, or mobility. More recently, social innovation has received growing attention in relation to new and potentially disruptive technological developments, which often need to be embedded in complementary institutional, organisational, and behavioural changes to ensure that transformation pathways are pursued that are beneficial to society. The recent COVID 19 crisis has demonstrated that social innovations can also play a vital role in handling unexpected problems for which no immediate technological solutions are available. This study therefore distinguishes between three types of contexts in which social innovations can potentially play an important role for addressing societal challenges: SI for socio-technical system change, SI for managing disruptive technologies in society, and SI for better tackling and preparing for crises.

Against this backdrop, the overarching aims of the study are to improve the understanding of the role of social innovation for addressing and resolving these types of societal challenges and devise appropriate rationales and inroads for policy interventions.

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  1. Develop a conceptual framework and typology of different types of social innovations, with a focus on those social innovations that help address major social challenges;
  2. Develop a process model of social innovation and its role for transformative change, taking into account the role of the particularly relevant actor and stakeholder groups;
  3. Analyse empirically the nature, scope and contribution of social innovations to solving major societal challenges and shaping the associated transformation processes;
  4. Analysis of hurdles and obstacles to the generation, scaling and generalisation of social innovation;
  5. Identify suitable rationales for policy intervention in social innovation processes, and their limits;
  6. Analyse framework conditions and policy instruments in selected countries, aiming to foster social innovation activities and subsequent processes of transformative change;
  7. Formulate implications for the design of research and innovation policy measures in Germany to stimulate and support social innovation.

  • literature review, review of recent research
  • case studies of three types of contexts for social innovations
  • comparative mini cases of novel social innovation policy instruments

Policy recommendations (in short):

  1. Fully recognise in R&I policies the growing importance of social innovation for addressing societal challenges.
  2. Focus R&I policies for social innovation not only on the early stages of experimenting with new solutions, but also on the progression from social innovations to system innovations, and accommodate policies to the specific requirements of the different stages.
  3. The diffusion of social innovations beyond their initial local contexts of ideation often requires other mechanisms than those known from the diffusion of profit-oriented product, process, and service innovations. R&I policies need to explore additional intervention points and mechanisms.
  4. Transformation pathways together with the underlying generalisation processes require high levels of reflexivity in order to be adapted along the path. Strategic intelligence, spaces for reflection, and iterative, interactive learning processes are needed in order to adjust problem understanding and possible solutions as part of a truly "agile" R&I policies for social innovation
  5. The range of organisations for which social innovation matters is widening – and with it the group of potential addressees of R&I policies.
  6. Given the distributed character of many social innovations, centralised governance is often at odds with their specific characteristics.
  7. Social innovations play multi-facetted roles for the three types of societal challenges investigated (i.e., system transitions, disruptive technologies, crises). They help address different types of market, system and transformational failures that occur frequently in these contexts. This justifies targeted policy support to social innovation, which also depends on the stage of advancement and maturity of social innovations.
  8. In all three contexts, requirements for (social) innovation are derived from future social needs, which stresses the importance of anticipating such needs to prepare for policy action well in advance. This observation also calls for rethinking how rationales for policy intervention are formulated. Rather than referring to 'failures' to which government reacts upon their occurrence, a turn towards 'proactive' rationales to justify the need for forward-looking policy interventions is called for.
  9. Experience with social innovation policies in some pioneering countries show that new policy mixes are needed to give social innovation a boost. While keeping in mind the specificity of national cultures and policy styles, the analysis points out that persistent support for social innovation, enduring over several legislative periods, is key to ensuring the availability of 'patient' social investment funding.
  10. The measurement of social innovation continues to be a major challenge, for conceptual, methodological and data availability reasons. For the advancement of our understanding of social innovation and its impacts, it is of utmost importance not only to invest into the development of new approaches, but in particular into the agreement on a common definition and conceptual framework of social innovation as well as the harmonisation of data collection procedures across countries, by drawing on sound categories and process models of (social) innovation, such as the one developed in this report.

Duration

1.2023-9.2023

Clients

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH