Social innovation (SI) shows up everywhere - research articles, policy programmes, grant calls, and community projects. Yet it is surprisingly hard to pin down what the term actually means. We summarise a key message from the literature that is central to DeCrises: social innovation is less a single, stable definition and more a field of debates about what kinds of change count as “social”, what counts as “innovation”, and who gets to decide.

Why is the term contested?

Most contemporary definitions describe social innovation as new ideas, services, or ways of organising that aim to address social needs and improve people’s lives. This can include anything from new community services to new forms of cooperation, new governance arrangements, or shifts in everyday practices.

These definitions sound similar to many other approaches that also aim to “do good” through novelty, such as, responsible innovation, inclusive innovation, grassroots innovation, social entrepreneurship, and more. It can be hard to tell where one concept ends, and another begins (Howaldt et al., 2014).

Another issue is the distinction between social innovation and social change. If social innovation is defined as “new social practices”, it starts to look like a rebranding of social change in general (Genov, 2021). Some scholars respond by saying social innovation is best understood at the micro and meso levels (people, groups, organisations, networks), while broader “social change” refers to large-scale societal transformations (Domanski et al., 2020). Others treat social innovation as organised social change at any level. Several literature reviews have tried to pin down what social innovation includes. Some propose checklists of characteristics (for example: novelty, a social objective, participation, empowerment, impact, and potential contribution to sustainability). Yet there’s also a consensus across studies that there is no integrative framework when it comes to defining or studying social change through social innovation (Satalkina & Steiner, 2022). This has led some to argue that social innovation is a policy “buzzword” or a depoliticized “win-win” label (Fougère et al., 2017). 

From defining SI to identifying different paradigms of SI

One way to make sense of the debate is to see “social innovation” as a concept that is itself produced through policy and political priorities of different paradigms (or worldviews) (Ayob et al., 2016; Phillips et al., 2024; Satalkina & Steiner, 2022). These paradigms share the same conceptual vocabulary but differ in what they treat as the core problem - and what they treat as a good solution.

• Technocratic / instrumental views treat social innovation as a tool to make systems work better—often emphasising efficiency, competition, expert knowledge, and “what works”.

• Institutional / strong views understand SI as a process of "institutional change" and co-production, accepting the necessity of stakeholder engagement while seeking to empower marginalised groups within "complex adaptive systems.

• Democratic / radical views understand SI as a counter-hegemonic struggle aimed at repoliticising social spaces and meeting human needs through the horizontal distribution of power. It prioritises the counter-hegemonic potential of SI, focusing on the alienated needs to challenge, disrupt, and replace dominant, oppressive institutions.
  
  

An “interaction” lens: focusing on what people (and things) do together and how these different paradigms interact in practice

Drawing insights from the existing literature and considering how varied its four cases are, DeCrises does not impose a single, normative definition of social innovation. Instead, it looks at each case from the lens of interaction to understand both organised change as well as spontaneous change through which the boundaries of SI are negotiated.  We understand Interactions as an “ensemble performances, requiring interaction among many actors” (Domanski et al., 2020), through “exchange of matter, energy and information” (Genov, 2021).

This interaction lens to studying SI draws on ideas from Science and Technology Studies, where the “social” is not a separate layer sitting on top of the world but as something produced through everyday micro-interactions (Latour, 2019). From this angle, interaction is not only consensus-based collaboration. It also includes friction, unequal power, conflicting goals, and the ways actors adjust to one another over time. This distinction is important because several accounts of social innovation stories emphasise success and harmony, while overlooking tensions and unintended effects. The interaction paradigm ensures that we do not prescribe positive change to cases of SI but remain open to the formation of more complex, or even destructive, patterns of interaction, leading to negative impacts or shadow effects that may be difficult to tackle or even identify. Therefore, when studying cases promising to be SI or categorizing cases of organized social change as SI, it is important not only to examine the creation of new interactions but also to consider the direction of change and its potential side effects.

From this perspective, it becomes important to identify, explain, and define potential approaches for studying social innovation initiatives within complex governance settings. In the next blog, we illustrate this challenge through a case of industrial symbiosis in Norway, where significant efforts are underway, but where actors also encounter key obstacles. Tracing new social interactions, brought forth by attempts at organised social change, can reveal hidden or overlooked dynamics within current green and digital transition initiatives.

Key readings:

Ayob, N., Teasdale, S., & Fagan, K. (2016). How Social Innovation ‘Came to Be’: Tracing the Evolution of a Contested Concept. Journal of Social Policy, 45(4), 635–653. https://doi.org/10.1017/S004727941600009X

Domanski, D., Howaldt, J., & Kaletka, C. (2020). A comprehensive concept of social innovation and its implications for the local context – on the growing importance of social innovation ecosystems and infrastructures. European Planning Studies, 28(3), 454–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2019.1639397

Fougère, M., Segercrantz, B., & Seeck, H. (2017). A critical reading of the European Union’s social innovation policy discourse: (Re)legitimizing neoliberalism. Organization, 24(6), 819–843. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508416685171

Genov, N. (2021). Paradigmatic upgrading of social innovation studies. Journal of Sociology, 57(4), 825–841. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783320964554

Howaldt, J., Butzin, A., Domanski, D., Kaletka, C., & others. (2014). Theoretical approaches to social innovation – a critical literature review [Deliverable D1.1]. SI-DRIVE Project. https://www.si-drive.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/D1_1-Critical-Literature-Review_final.pdf

Latour, B. (2019). Gabriel Tarde and the End of the Social. Sociology of Power, 31(2), 217–239. https://doi.org/10.22394/2074-0492-2019-2-217-239

Phillips, A., Luo, R., & Wendland-Liu, J. (2024). Shifting the paradigm: A critical review of social innovation literature. International Journal of Innovation Studies, 8(1), 45–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijis.2023.08.003

Satalkina, L., & Steiner, G. (2022). Social Innovation: A Retrospective Perspective. Minerva, 60(4), 567–591. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-022-09471-y