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Potential contributions of universities to social innovation are explored with special attention to Southern countries. The normative guide is the notion of Sustainable Human Development understood as stressing the agency of least-advantaged sectors. The main challenges stem from decreasing sustainability and increasing inequality. Their impacts are highly dependent on how the tension between economic growth and environmental protection is managed. Improving actual perspectives demands harnessing advanced knowledge to foster inclusive and frugal innovation. For this to occur, universities need to be main actors. The context in which they act is analyzed with reference to the National Systems of Innovation conceptualization. Possible evolutions of universities as agents of social innovation are discussed with the aid of the Multi-Level Perspective. The importance of the Southern experience of innovating in scarcity conditions is highlighted and illustrated with the specific experience of a Latin American university. The cooperation of universities with weak social actors in ways that involve advanced knowledge appears as a key theoretical issue and as a difficult practical problem for the effective engagement of universities in social innovation. The diverse issues that such engagement needs to integrate conform an ambitious research program, of which the paper aims at giving a first glimpse.

The aim of this study is to provide new insights into the social innovation (SI) development process in the context of social start-ups. A multiple case study identifies the issues and mechanisms for social start-ups to develop a social need into a potentially scalable innovation and to validate and scale it up, while avoiding a possible failure. Results show that key challenges faced by social start-ups can be characterized according to the stage of the SI development path. Firstly, social start-ups' failure can be caused by the lack of expertise in social problems and of flexible processes for social ventures creation; secondly, by the lack of awareness of SI benefits and proper resources allocation; and, finally, by a weak understanding of the impact and intangible outcomes of the developed SI in society, while ensuring its economic sustainability. Successfully overcoming these challenges requires social start-ups to put in place the following mechanisms: (1) leveraging a vision and motivations that balance tensions in terms of the radical, economic and cultural aspects of SI; (2) engaging the SI stakeholders in different (and sequential) phases of SI development process; and (3) identifying and adopting the most suitable technological, financial and communication tools in an integrated way.

For decades, the cooperative enterprise (CE) produces market goods and/or provides services in the interest to its members, such as communities, customers, and suppliers. The upsurge of interest in social enterprises, and their balancing of social and economic interests, has also led to a renewed interest in CEs, often seen as a specific type of social enterprise. However, from an organizational perspective, this renewed interest has been both limited and scattered over a variety of fields. In this paper, we systematically review papers on CE in the mainstream organizational literature, defined as literature in the fields of economics, business, management and sociology. Our review integrates and synthesizes the current topics in the mainstream organizational literature and provides a number of avenues for future research. In addition, we compare our findings in the organizational literature to the social issues literature as these appeared to be quite complimentary. We found multilevel studies, determination of social impact—in particular measurable impact, managerial practices for sustainable (organisational) development, and the entrepreneurial opportunity generation process as the four key avenues for future research.

Social innovation is conceptualised as having two intimately related pillars: institutional innovation and locally embedded innovation, in the sense of social economy. Two main research questions were addressed: how political, institutional innovation is fostered and how does it influence social economy? A mixed methods research was conducted in the Mühlviertel NUTS3 region. Despite a framework of enhanced autonomy and institutional innovation for the main stakeholders, both macro and micro analysis illustrate a lack of intermediate space to: a) link the innovative agenda to high-state political agendas, and b) link institutional innovation to social economy.

L’article est basé sur une enquête portant sur la structuration de la démarche de développement durable et responsabilité sociale (DD-RS) dans les universités françaises. Il s’appuie sur la théorie de la structuration et la Théorie Néo-Institutionnelle pour construire un cadre conceptuel à la structuration de cette mission. Ce dernier est confronté à la pratique des établissements et débouche sur une typologie fondée sur le rôle de l’implication politique, de la culture du pilotage et des isomorphismes. La discussion autour de cette typologie, à partir d’une ACM montrant l’existence de groupes homogènes d’universités quant à leur structuration d’une démarche DD-RS, permet d’affiner le rôle de chacun des facteurs du modèle conceptuel.

In the past twenty years, innovation has slowly, but steadily, become an important presence in development cooperation discourse and practice. The ambitious UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda has accelerated this trend, providing a strong framework for the main argument in favour of an innovation agenda for international development: without new ideas and innovative solutions, solving the current global development challenges will not be possible. Although this innovation-push is in line with a wider predominant view of innovation as an inherently positive force of progress, that alone does not explain when, how, and why innovation becomes a key topic in the field. This paper seeks to fill this gap in the literature, providing an initial overview of innovation in development cooperation in the post-2000s. It argues, firstly, that innovation has always been part of international development policy and practice. Secondly, it links the recent strengthening of the innovation discourse to three trends in the systemic transformation of the field: the triumph of metrics-based agendas, the ICTs and digitalization revolutions, and the role of private sector actors. It concludes by critically assessing the implications of this narrative in changing the politics of innovation towards more inclusive sustainable development policies and practices.

The role of big finance and technology in social change is rapidly evolving. This book examines why large financial players are entering the social sector through social finance. Drawing on empirical research, the authors analyse the opportunities this new interest and commitment presents as well as the potential harm that can be done to vulnerable people when beneficiaries are not treated as partners and the social needs of people are not placed at the centre of the investment model. This book introduces a ‘Deliberate Leadership’ framework to help big finance tackle problems with no easy solutions. The book also analyses how current technologies (including blockchain) are being used and the benefits and drawbacks of different features of these technologies from the standpoint of the beneficiary and investor. The authors derive a series of insights into the model of technology for social finance and impact investing. Written as a practical book for students alongside a field book based on an action learning methodology, this volume will be useful to those in social finance and impact investing.

Ethical, social and environmental accounting is the practice of assessing organisations' performances in sustainability and business ethics topics. The organisations typically publish the results in a sustainability or non-financial report. We aim at offering a novel perspective from which researchers investigate, practitioners apply and policy-makers regulate ethical, social and environmental accounting (ESEA). The large quantity of ESEA methods and tools causes managerial problems, affecting the identity of social enterprises and complicating policy making. We will develop a domain-specific modelling language to specify existing ESEA methods and capture the advantages of model-driven engineering. We will create a repository where method models can be stored. These models contain the data structure and configuration of the methods. We will also develop openESEA, a run-time model interpreter that automatically executes ESEA method models. We will offer features to allow organisations to tailor the methods to their needs, to support model management operations, and to compare existing methods to inform policy makers about their similarities and differences. This project combines expertise in information science and social entrepreneurship with the intention to pave the way to future research avenues in ESEA and, eventually, to profound changes towards a fair and sustainable economy.

The last few years witnessed theoretical and practical contributions to the field of social innovation and social enterprise. However, analysis of the interplay between these two different realms is still limited. This article aims to fill some gaps in this respect. We deal with historical reconstruction of the concept of Social Enterprise and Social Innovation, and their conceptual premises. We consider the process of creation of social innovation in social enterprises. As members’ motivations, ownership rights and governance rules in social enterprises create a new relational context and new routines, which are germane to the production of social knowledge and deliberation, social innovation can be considered one of the main outcomes of this setting. Social motivations, collective action of a cooperative kind, multistakeholder governance and socialization of resources, and their interplay are singled out as main drivers of innovation. Social innovation is seen as akin to novelty in social interaction, a non-standardized and non-standardizable outcome of the operation of this organizational form.

The incubator model of a support structure to develop high-tech firms from academic research was imported from the USA to Brazil, where it serves a variety of economic and social purposes. The Brazilian cooperative incubator is a creative reinterpretation of the business incubator model to advance social innovation. It addresses issues of social exclusion, poverty and unemployment by empowering favela residents to create their own jobs. Having diffused broadly, the Brazilian cooperative incubator allows us to address the issue of growth in social enterprises. This paper employs a triple helix dynamic model, including government (local, regional and national), academic (different types of universities, industry (firms of varying scale and sector, industry associations) and NGOs (non governamental organizations) to explain the diffusion and expansion of this innovation in social entrepreneurship.

Cette recherche se propose d’explorer le processus de développement de l’entreprise d’économie sociale issue d’un partenariat fondateur. Nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement à la façon dont l’entreprise d’économie sociale opère, à travers ses choix d’orientation et organisationnels, l’équilibre entre ses besoins propres de développement et les besoins spécifiques de son partenaire de fondation. La Caisse d’économie Desjardins de la Culture constitue le terrain d’investigation. Le rôle de cette organisation, issue d’un partenariat avec l’Union des artistes (UDA), est passé de celui de prestataire de services aux membres de l’UDA à celui d’agent de développement du milieu de la culture. En décrivant les étapes et leviers de ce passage, nous nous attachons à comprendre le mécanisme d’autonomisation de l’organisation par rapport à son partenaire d’origine.

Design has always played a role in the process of production, transformations in society and the economy, shifts in technology and impacts on the environment. The nature of the changes created by our post-industrial era is challenging the character of design and its role in society. The post-industrial era is creating complex projects for technology, service, systems, strategy and products. Clients are even becoming undefined stakeholders, and this can be extended to the entire community and the environment. The rise of digital technology and the knowledge society are introducing a new culture, which can be open, participatory, shared and collaborative. Here the designer is acting as a researcher, always questioning the character of the project, its outcomes and process. Open access, co-design, crowdfunding, digital manufacturing, open-source, DIY, enabling systems and networking can be included in the toolbox of the designer and can create opportunities to drive the change towards sustainability, equity and democracy. Social innovation is leveraging forms of collaboration and co-production in which designers, innovators, users and communities co-create knowledge and solutions for a wide range of social needs, exploiting the networking technologies. This book explores a number of areas where design can contribute to face the contemporary transformations in our society with real-life collaborative research and innovation projects. Through a number of Canadian social innovation case studies collected in social, environmental and technological fields, we recognize how the role of the designer cannot be limited to the production of finished objects; rather, designers can create tools and platforms to help users and citizens participate in projects, even allowing forms of personalization

The UK government has called for a rehabilitation revolution in England and Wales and put its faith in market testing. It hopes this will lead to greater innovation, resulting in reductions in re-offending while also driving down costs. However, many of the most innovative developments in criminal justice over recent decades have come through social innovation. Examples include restorative justice and justice reinvestment. In this article we argue that while social innovation will respond to some extent to conventional economic policy levers such as market testing, de-regulation and the intelligent use of public sector purchasing power it is not simply an extension of the neo-liberal model into the social realm. Social innovation, based on solidarity and reciprocity, is an alternative to the logic of the neo-liberal paradigm. In policy terms, the promotion of social innovation will need to take account of the interplay between government policy, social and cultural norms and individual and social capacity. Current proposals for reforming the criminal justice system may not leave sufficient scope to develop the conditions for effective social innovation.

Offender mental health is a major societal challenge. Improved collaboration between mental health and criminal justice services is required to address this challenge. This article explores social innovation as a conceptual framework with which to view these collaborations and develop theoretically informed strategies to optimize interorganizational working. Two key innovation frameworks are applied to the offender mental health field and practice illustrations provided of where new innovations in collaboration, and specifically co-creation between the mental health system and criminal justice system, take place. The article recommends the development of a competency framework for leaders and front line staff in the mental health system and criminal justice systems to raise awareness and skills in the innovation process, especially through co-creation across organizational boundaries.

This paper describes how the Experimental Social Innovation and Dissemination (ESID) model was successfully used to reduce male violence against women in an intimate relationship. The women in the study who worked with advocates (the key feature of the program) were significantly less likely to be abused again compared to their counterparts in the control condition. They also reported a higher quality of life and fewer difficulties in obtaining community resources even 2 years after the short-term intervention. The advocacy provided consisted of five phases: assessment, implementation, monitoring, secondary implementation, and termination. Assessment collected important information on the client's needs and goals. This involved asking the women what they needed and by observing women's circumstances. In response to each unmet need identified, the advocate worked with the woman to access appropriate community resources. This was the implementation phase. The third phase involved monitoring the effectiveness of the intervention. The advocate and client assessed whether the resource had been obtained and whether it met the identified need. If it was not effective, advocates and clients initiated a secondary implementation to meet the client's needs more effectively. Termination of the intervention consisted of three components. First, advocates emphasized termination dates from the beginning of the intervention in order to prevent termination from surprising the client. Second, beginning about week seven of the 10-week intervention, advocates intensified their efforts to transfer the skills and knowledge the women had acquired throughout the course. Third, advocates left families with written “termination packets,” which contained lists of community resources, helpful tips for obtaining difficult-to-access resources, and useful telephone numbers. A total of 143 women participated in the experimental condition, and women in the control group were not contacted again until their next interview; they received services-as-usual. 30 references

We conjecture that adoption of agricultural biotech innovation imposes relationship-specific investments that exacerbate hold-up costs between biotech producers and farmers. Moreover, the increasing presence of biotech reduces biodiversity, which is a significant negative externality on food production across farms. As such, increasing biotech has the potential to exacerbate food insecurity. By contrast, certified organic operations have the potential to have the opposite effect. We examine 15 agrarian states in the U.S. and find evidence strongly consistent with these propositions. We discuss implications for policy, practice, and future research.

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Social Innovation Canada will create a unique, inclusive and open movement to put people and planet first. It will provide the collaborative infrastructure to strengthen Canada’s social innovation ecosystem, empowering people, organizations and systems with the tools, knowledge, skills and connections that they need to solve real and complex problems.