ESF project 4895: Meer werk maken van innovatie voor werkgelegenheid en arbeidsmarkt
ANALYSIS FICHE OF LITERATURE
Ref. 6C
TITLE OF LITERATURE: How to grow social innovations
AUTHOR : Anna Davies et al
TYPE OF AUTHOR (academic, consultants, practitioners, other): practitioner (Young Foundation)
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE): International social innovation research
conference, 2-4 September 2013, Oxford
ORIENTATION OF LITERATURE (check with X):




innovation in general: x
innovation by / within the public sector: x
innovation oriented towards citizens:
innovation oriented towards social and employment issues typically dealt with by ESF:
LESSONS LEARNT REGARDING:
A. How to define innovation e.g. in types
The article distinguished between social innovation (systems), social entrepreneurship (person) and
social enterprise (organization) with the first being the broadest and the second and last more
narrow subsets. This means social entrepreneurship can exist without social enterprise but not the
reverse (see below).
Social innovation
-------------------------------------------------Social entrepreneurship
------------------Social enterprise
------The article makes the link between its definition of social innovation and types of “growth” (see
below).

New social entreprise = scaling studied by (social) management/enterprise studies;



New legislation = diffusion of policy studied by political science and public administration;
New behaviour = diffusion as behavior change, studied by psychology, behavioural
economics and communication studies ;
New service = diffusion as implementation / systems change studied by change management
an organizational diffusion theory.
Some remarks are given about this categorisation:



The categories interact e.g. new behavior shapes and is shaped by new legislation.
The categories represent tangible forms of innovation. Perhaps also new “concepts” should
be included?
If we are interested in large scale social transformation, is it not more important to think
about how many social innovations of different forms are needed to constitute a
transformation?
B. How to formulate an innovation strategy (in terms of scope, types of innovation,
requirements)
C. How to organize innovation as a process in different stages?
The article focuses on understanding of how social innovations grow. This means it focuses on the
“final” stage of innovation. They review the concepts of “scaling” as well as “diffusion”.
Scaling
Scaling is understood to refer to increasing social impact, rather than to growing an organization (as
is the common understanding of “scale” in business).
Several forms of scaling are provided:



Dissemination/sharing: providing information and assistance to others looking to bring an
innovation to their community;
Affiliation: creating formal relations with specific agreements with others;
Branching: creating local sites through one organization (growth within an organization).
This represents a spectrum of low to high control and high to low scaling of impact. Scale and control
are seen as trade-offs.
There are four issues with this way of thinking about “scaling”:
1) It stays rooted in the idea that it is a focal organization that needs to scale, rather than the
impact of an innovation;
2) It assumes something starts small and then gets bigger (e.g. from pilot to mainstream with
more and more people served). But sometimes innovation happens at scale directly;
3) It is linked to ideas of standardization and control whereas in the social field, reinvention and
adaptation will always be very important (e.g. co-production, personalization, the state being
“relational”,… );
4) It fails to capture the political nature of much social innovation where e.g. regulations, laws…
need to be changed. “Scaling” seems poorly aligned with social innovation as developing
new legislation or re-designing existing services.
Diffusion
Where “scaling” focuses on organisations and their “growth”, diffusion focuses on adopters of an
innovation as well as on the innovation itself.
Diffusion theory comes from E. Rogers. He launched key concepts relating to the nature of the
adopter e.g. as early adopters, early majorities , etc. He also suggested that key attributes of an
innovation determine its likelihood of adoption.
However, it should be understood that “adopter” characteristics can change depending on the
innovation and that different people also perceive the attributes of an innovation differently.
Organisational diffusion theory shifted away from persons adopting innovations as the unit of
analysis to organisations. This is still a field in full development but major themes exist:





Innovations have a hard core and a soft periphery (structures and systems that need to form
around it to support implementation of the hard core);
Rarely is the adoption process staged in a predictable way (e.g. awareness, evaluation,
adoption, implementation);
Competing bodies of evidence will be discussed amongst professional networks rather than
one piece of evidence being the basis of adoption;
To be assimilated, innovations need to make sense in a way that relates somehow to
previous experience and understanding (e.g. Weick’s “sensemaking” concept);
Diffusion is closely connected to existing power structures and interests. This remains under
researched as a topic.
Strengths and weaknesses of “diffusion”:




Scaling suggests that spreading an innovation can be controlled and planned for while
diffusion suggests that it is not linear or orderly;
Diffusion is a social rather than a rational process: the way people interact is more important
that the evidence of the advantages of an innovation;
Diffusion suggests gradual spread whereas adoption of some innovations resembles more
sudden tipping points or cascades;
There is little practical advice coming from this strain or research.
D. How to define outputs of innovation e.g. in terms of idea, concept, prototype…?
E. How to make decisions regarding progress of an innovation?
F. What roles exist for different actors in the innovation process? What competences are
required for these roles?
G. How to organize interaction with external stakeholders (open innovation)?
H. Specific tools that are explained (list briefly for each tool in what stage, by which role, why,
how it is to be used).
a) Tool 1: