Abstract

This chapter introduces social innovation, a more established yet still emergent approach to innovation that is often associated with social enterprise (i.e., the creation of new business ventures with social goals). Social innovation can and does involve technological innovation but is more about ‘reassembling’ social relations and processes—i.e., organising in new ways to generate social and economic value. It can envisage outcomes such as community empowerment and involve more grassroots, ‘bottom-up’ approaches to innovation. In this chapter we highlight how social innovation encompasses a broad suite of endeavours with the potential to reconfigure established modes of living and organising. We describe contemporary demands being placed on social innovation which are seeking to stretch it towards more transformative outcomes (exceeding a focus on social enterprise). Challenges facing the field are discussed, including the need to deepen understandings (and evidence) of its ‘on the ground’ benefits and impacts. The chapter begins to engage with concepts of social complexity and institutional theory and points to a contested side of social innovation, particularly framings of social innovation which delegate change processes to private actors and market mechanisms, potentially de-emphasising the role of communities and the state.