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Studies on public sector innovation often treat this type of innovation as something that emerges within public sector organizations. However, innovation theory argues that external sources of innovation are more fruitful sources of ideas. We claim that universities must be treated as a mandatory element in public sector innovation. This paper is aimed at clarifying the place of public sector innovation in the classification of innovations currently used in the literature. It also seeks to conceptualize an approach for future research on the topic. Our primary goal is to identify the role of different actors in the development of public sector innovation. We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of university involvement in public sector innovation. The paper consists of two parts. The first defines concepts of innovation in general and public sector innovation viewed as a variation on social innovation. The second is dedicated to an analysis of the experience of Russian universities in enhancing collaboration between actors in the public innovation system.

This article extends the field conceptualisation of social change and innovation adoption, which hinges upon the strategic capacities of actors, to the online environment. We focus on a key aspect of social movement organisations (SMOs), competition for members, resources and attention over an environmental risk issue. The incorporation of network theory enables us to map how the structural position of actors in the field is associated with their actions – for example, their response to an exogenous shock such as a new threat to the environment. We analyse how actors in the online environmental movement respond to the emergence of nanoscience and technology (NST) as a risk issue, and test the field theory hypothesis that dominated actors are more likely to adopt this issue in the early stages of emergence. Our findings challenge field theory orthodoxy and suggest that whilst challengers innovate, dominants co-opt by adopting the issue in a second stage. Finally, we examine why the notion that NST entails significant environmental and health risks was not propelled into wider public consciousness.

People with disabilities are an important actor and target group in social innovation initiatives worldwide, as there is a clear need for better inclusion of this group in society. A way to improve the inclusion of people with disabilities is the development of assistive technology. In practice, people with disabilities often use technologies of which the primary use is not that of an assistive technology. They use the technology for a different use and context than the developer intended – termed 'secondary use'. The current paper studies the factors that are needed to make the secondary use of technology a success. First, a literature review and explorative study in the Netherlands are performed, after which a framework on the secondary use of technology for inclusion, specifically for people with disabilities, is developed.

The recent surge of investment in Civic Technologies represents a unique opportunity to realize the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for improving democratic participation. In this review, we study what technologies are proposed and evaluated in the academic literature for such goal. We focus our exploration on how civic technology is used in the collaborative creation of solutions for social issues and innovations for public services (i.e., social innovation). Our goal is to provide researchers, designers, and practitioners a starting point to understand both the academic state of the art and the existing opportunities for ICT in a democracy.

The 21st century has brought a cornucopia of new knowledge and technologies. But there has been little progress in our ability to solve social problems using social innovation – the deliberate invention of new solutions to meet social needs - across the globe. Geoff Mulgan is a pioneer in the global field of social innovation. Building on his experience advising international governments, businesses and foundations, he explains how it provides answers to today’s global social, economic and sustainability issues. He argues for matching R&D in technology and science with a socially focused R&D and harnessing creative imagination on a larger scale than ever before. Weaving together history, ideas, policy and practice, he shows how social innovation is now coming of age, offering a comprehensive view of what can be done to solve the global social challenges we face.

In this chapter I turn to how social science can be adapted to the challenges and tools of the 2020s, becoming more data driven, more experimental and fuelled by more dynamic feedback between theory and practice. Social science at its grandest is the way societies understand themselves: why they cohere or fall apart; why some grow and others shrink; why some care and others hate; how big structural forces explain the apparently special facts of our own biographies. It observes but also shapes action, and then learns from those actions.Starting with the idea of social science as collective selfknowledge, I describe how new approaches to intelligence of all kinds can help to reinvigorate it. I begin with data and computational social science and then move on to cover the idea of social R&D and experimentation, new ways for universities to link into practice, including social science parks, accelerators tied to social goals, challenge-based methods and social labs of all kinds, before concluding with the core argument: an account of how social science can engage with the emerging field of intelligence design. This is, I hope, a plausible and desirable direction of travel.The rise of data-driven and computational social ScienceWe are all familiar with the extraordinary explosion of new ways to observe social phenomena, which are bound to change how we ask social questions and how we answer them. Each of us leaves a data trail of whom we talk to, what we eat and where we go. It's easier than ever to survey people, to spot patterns, to scrape the web, to pick up data from sensors or to interpret moods from facial expressions. It's easier than ever to gather perceptions and emotions as well as material facts – for example, through sentiment analysis of public debates. And it's easier than ever for organisations to practise social science – whether it's investment organisations analysing market patterns, human resources departments using behavioural science or local authorities using ethnography.These tools are not monopolised by professional social scientists. In cities, for example, offices of data analytics link multiple data sets and governments use data to feed tools using AI – like Predpol or HART – to predict who is most likely to go to hospital or end up in prison.

The Syrian refugee crisis has been termed “the greatest humanitarian crisis of the last century” and countries around the world have stepped up to provide safe haven to millions of Syrians fleeing violence. Canada's unique private sponsorship policy coupled with government sponsorship of refugees saw more than 40,000 welcomed to Canada in a matter of months prompting the need for new processes and solutions. Grassroots organizations emerged, with new partnerships, processes and approaches enabled with new applications of simple technologies and revealed opportunities to leverage and amplify government resources. While fragmented and sometimes primitive these efforts signaled new opportunities to create an innovative “sharing economy” approach. This paper will review the relations between these new initiatives, actors and networks and the opportunities to drive systems change through a social innovation lens.

Some of the most important resources are intangible, such as knowledge and access to networks. In the developing world, technology can facilitate these resources and address basic human needs in a variety of ways: from provision of farmer training and cloud-controlled clean water systems to health information and mobile money services. Some of these services expand access to resources in ways that particularly benefit women. In environments where women are disadvantaged socially and economically, information and communications technologies (ICT) can enable women to access valuable information, consider a broader range of business opportunities, access wider markets, partake in educational programs, and share experiences with and gain mentorship from other women. However, there are large gender gaps in the access to technology, particularly in rural areas. To begin, I briefly discuss the role of technology in development, and consider the extent and significance of technology gender gaps. Next, I review key barriers to reducing these gaps, and discuss the concept of social innovation as it applies to technology interventions. Examples from five social innovations in India — a country with large technology gender gaps — illustrate the range of possibilities for innovative access to and use of ICT for diverse target groups. I conclude with some suggestions for further improvement in this area.

La relation entre l’innovation sociale et la gouvernance n’est pas suffisamment explorée dans la littérature scientifique. Les analyses que l’on trouve sur ce sujet se rapportent principalement à la relation entre l’administration publique, la participation citoyenne, le changement social et les nouvelles formes de gouvernance (Lévesque, 2012 ; Moulaert<em>et al</em>., 2007 ; Novy, Hamme et Leubolt, 2009). Dans ces approches, l’innovation sociale est abordée comme le rapport entre les relations sociales et la gouvernance. Ainsi, cette perspective cherche plutôt à comprendre comment certains groupes sociaux développent leurs capacités sociopolitiques pour garantir leur accès aux ressources qui permettent de répondre

es innovations sociales, à la manière de bougies d'allumage, engendrent des actions collectives qui proposent des solutions différentes de celles des pratiques dominantes aptes à générer la transformation sociale. Cet ouvrage expose les enjeux que pose la transformation sociale par l'innovation sociale et les documente par des illustrations ciblées sur des thématiques ou des expériences précises.

Social entrepreneurship is one of the most notable innovations in the global era. By challenging the conventions of established social and environmental organizations and building new models of cooperation and exchange between the public, private, and civil society sectors, social entrepreneurship aims to provide systemic and scalable solutions to some of the most pressing threats and urgent issues that currently impact billions of people around the world. It is concerned with the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, new health pandemics, water and energy crises, growing migration, seemingly intractable issues of inequality and endemic poverty, the rise of terrorism and nuclear instability, and the “challenge of affluence” in many developed countries. The impact and influence of social entrepreneurship can be identified across the world in terms of direct interventions and action on the ground and also in terms of its wider, political influence as a movement for societal change that aims to reframe debates and alter institutional logics to increase the effectiveness of the provision of public goods and grow the positive externalities of social and environmental action. This entry defines social entrepreneurship as a global-level phenomenon and locates it as a new set of logics and institutions that aim to achieve systemic change and address market failures across the public, private, and civil society spheres.