The interest in social innovation has grown over the last 10 years but it’s not new – since the dawn of time individuals, families and communities, governments, and companies have developed innovative solutions to tackle social problems. What is new is the energy being invested into taking our social innovation abilities to a higher level. Around the world there are initiatives to connect innovators, share knowledge of what works, find ways to attract resources, and develop new partnerships that cross communities and sectors. And what is also new – Governments are starting to recognize that they are a critical partner in scaling proven social innovation.
Category Archives: News
Rewarding Social Innovation: Institutionalizing Competitions
Competitions to encourage innovation have spread around the world and they play a significant role in facilitating and promoting social innovation. For example, the Dell Social Innovation Competition has been running since 2007 and has produced over 4,500 ideas and Ashoka’s Changemakers claims 5,000 “high-impact” solutions since 2004 from over 145 countries. Corporations, foundations and governments are often the sponsors of competitions, with targets and prizes, on a diverse range of issues from climate change to gender equity. The stakes are often very high: The European Commission is banking on its Social Innovation Competition this year to generate solutions to its unemployment crisis – to find work for over 25 million unemployed citizens[1].
So much seems to be resting on these types of competitions, but what do we really know about them? Why are they growing in popularity? How are they most effectively organized? How might they change in the future?
Researchers from Cass Business School in London and the Newcastle Business School, Joseph Lampel, Pushkar Jha and Ajay Bhalla, sought to answer these questions*.
Europe: The World’s Largest Social Innovation Lab
There is nothing like a crisis to generate action. Even the most optimistic observers accept that Europe faces monumental economic and social challenges. Small or incremental solutions simply don’t cut it. These are the perfect conditions for social innovation: Solutions are needed that transform systems, not just tinker with them. Europe has become a “living lab” for this emerging field by default – it has to urgently experiment with new ideas and processes now. So, when two Commissioners, Johannes Hahn and Laszlo Andor, from the European Commission issue a Guide to Social Innovation*, it’s worth studying.
Social Innovation Notes 