1. PROMOTING SOCIAL INNOVATION:
THE CATALYSING ROLE OF RESEARCH
Frank Moulaert, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven/Newcastle University/ MESHS Lille
h"p://www.socialpolis.eu

2. POINTS COVERED
 Positioning: 20 years of research on social
innovation
 What is social innovation?
 Social science research on social innovation
 The role of social innovation in economy and
society
 Policy making to promote social innovation
 The role of science in promoting social innovation
 Socially innovative innovation policy
 Spreading the benefits of innovation across
Europe
 Some bibliography

3. POSITIONING: 20 YEARS OF RESEARCH ON
SOCIAL INNOVATION
 Research on social innovation goes back to some
of the founding fathers and greatest names in
social science: Max Weber, Emile Durkheim,
Joseph Schumpeter, …
 In the 1970-1980s articles and a synthesis book
by Chambon, David and Devevey “Les
innovations sociales” (PUF, 1982)
 At the end of the 1980s social science renews it
interest in the study of social innovation.

4. WHAT IS SOCIAL INNOVATION? - 1
The tendency today is to use social innovation as
a common denominator for practices and
organizational changes promoting the inclusion
of people into the economy and society … Social
innovation serves as a kind of a federating
concept for practices of charities, social
enterprises, CSR initiatives, etc. Although this
intuitive-inductive approach to SI is useful, it
should be combined with scientific approaches,
because these have reconstructed the logic of
social innovation initiatives and processes.

5. WHAT IS SOCIAL INNOVATION? - 2
Some definitions from different social
science literatures:
 Michael Mumford: “… the generation and
implementation of new ideas about social relationships
and social organization.” (2002, p. 253)
 Chambon, David et Devevey: “des innovations
sociales”…“des pratiques visant plus ou moins
directement à permettre à un individu - ou à un groupe
d’individus - de prendre en charge un besoin social - ou
un ensemble de besoins - n’ayant pas trouvé de réponses
satisfaisantes par ailleurs” (1982, p. 8)

6. WHAT IS SOCIAL INNOVATION? - 3
 SINGOCOM (ALMOLIN, 2005: Moulaert et al. 1990):
Social innovation is path dependent and contextual. It
refers to those changes in agendas, agency and
institutions that lead to a better inclusion of excluded
groups and individuals into various spheres of society at
various spatial scales. Social innovation is very strongly
a matter of process innovation, i.e. changes in the
dynamics of social relations, including power relations.
… as social innovation is about social inclusion, it is
also about countering or overcoming conservative forces
that are eager to strengthen or preserve social exclusion
situations.
…. social innovation therefore explicitly refers to an
ethical position of social justice. The latter is of course
susceptible to a variety of interpretations and will in
practice often be the outcome of social construction.

7. SOCIAL SCIENCE DISCIPLINES WORKING
ON SOCIAL INNOVATION
 Management science and organisation
theory
 Approaches covering links between
economy, society and environment
 Fine and creative arts
 Spatial development approaches
(Integrated Area Development)
 Governance and public administration

8. THE ROLE OF SOCIAL INNOVATION IN ECONOMY
AND SOCIETY
To examine the role of social innovation in economy and
society a number of questions about the relationships
between goals and means, context and process, etc. should
be examined. In the FP projects I coordinated on SI the
following questions were of high significance:
 Purpose (or finalité) of the SI initiative? Or in reaction to?
 Transformation of social relations – Organizational aspects
 Role of special agencies (leadership, creative individuals)
 Place and Space - Path dependence, spatial embeddedness,
articulation between spatial scales, spatial networks
 How to bypass the tension between SI norms and the
reality in firms, communities, public administrations, etc. ?

9. EXAMPLE FROM URBAN DEVELOPMENT
COLLECTIVE ACTION AND POLICY
Focus
of
Social
Innova/on
“Scale”
“Finalité”
(In
reac/on
to?
To
improve?)
Governance
(Social
learning,
coopera/on,
decision-­‐making
and
communica/on,
…)
Ins/tu/onal
leverage
(Law
making,
funding,
public
ins/tu/on
building,
…)
Neighbourhood
Mul7-­‐dimensional
neighbourhood
development
plan
–
IAD
covering
housing,
public
space,
social
services,
Neighbourhood
commi"ees,
Neighbourhood
Councils,
Social
Enterprises
Neighbourhood
Development
Agencies,
City
funds,
EC
Community
Ini7a7ves
City
City-­‐wide
development
plan
covering
city-­‐wide
services,
transporta7on
network,
…
Networking
among
development
actors
City-­‐wide
administra7on
with
clear
district
competencies,
Chamber
of
Commerce+
(Social
Economy)
Region
-­‐
Na7on
Na7on-­‐wide
sustainable
development
agenda
for
ci7es
Interscalar
policy
learning
networks
–
Mul7-­‐scalar
governance
City-­‐Funds,
Social
economy
laws
and
ins7tu7ons

10. POLICY-MAKING TO PROMOTE SOCIAL
INNOVATION
Policy making should either be socially innovative
itself or/and catalyse (other) socially innovative
initiatives:
 Socially innovative policy-making: policies built
through greater democratic participation, joint
learning networks among different citizens groups,
targeting social cohesion goals along with (or instead
of) competitiveness objectives
 Catalyse SI initiatives by providing them with legal
frameworks and supportive institutions, building
customized funding mechanisms privileging social
and ecological allocation criteria
 The role of multi-level governance
 Special focus on: education policy developing SI skills
– R&D policy for social innovation

11. THE ROLE OF (SOCIAL) SCIENCE IN PROMOTING
SOCIAL INNOVATION
 Research on social innovation themes in a diversity of
disciplines, but especially in an interdisciplinary way,
i.e. by building ‘joint-up’ analytical frameworks (e.g.
management science, spatial planning and public
administration addressing social innovation in
neighbourhoods)
 Research on a better integration of social,
organizational and technological innovation
 Research through social innovation: changing the
partnerships in research teams – Working towards
transdisciplinary research involving different types of
actors in the sequence of stages in a research process
(with research on methods of participation, co-
learning, co-design, co-production, co-monitoring, …)
 Methodological developments supporting inter and
transdisciplinary research.

12. INNOVATION POLICY
 Look at innovation policy in an inclusive way,
considering the links between social, technological
and organizational innovation
 Develop research agendas with a particular focus on
social innovation
 With a significant attention for institutional
innovation (corporate and organizational governance)
 Educational policy: educating multi-dimensional
cultural beings, citizens, ecologists, economists,
leaders, …capable of being effective in democratic
social relations
 Regional policy
 R&D policy reoriented following foci in the this and
the previous slide.

13. SPREADING THE BENEFITS OF INNOVATION
ACROSS EUROPE
 “Spreading the benefits of” is a social process. Social
processes are about social relations, social learning,
collective action, building of value systems …
 Which benefits? Innovative social relations is one
benefit. But for the purpose of?
 There is increasing discontent about some
emblematic ‘innovations’ in the Europe of the last
two decades:
+ Decentralised governance and coordination
threatening Social Europe
+ The individualization of Social Europe
+ “Control Europe” and the issue of security
+ The hegemonic style of high tech sectors
(medicine, ICT, large scale construction, …)

14. SPREADING THE BENEFITS OF INNOVATION
ACROSS EUROPE
This creates problems of thrust and legitimacy,
leads to managerial approaches to politics and
policy, … (The privatization of public space.)
 This discontent can be overcome by resocialising
the political debate and by attributing a ‘socially
innovative’ content to innovation processes in all
spheres of society.
 Socially innovative research on social innovation
can significantly contribute to overcome this
discontent.

15. BIBLIOGRAPHY
 A. Mehmood and F. Moulaert ‘Spaces of social
innovation’, in A.J. Pike, A. Rodríguez-Pose and
J. Tomaney eds. (2010) A Handbook of Local and
Regional Development. London: Routledge
 Moulaert, F., Martinelli, F., Swyngedouw, E. and
Gonzalez, S. eds (2010) Can neighbourhoods save
the city? London: Routledge.
 Moulaert, F. (2000; 2002) Integrated Area
Development in European Cities. Oxford: Oxford
University Press
 Moulaert, F. , D. MacCallum, A. Mehmood and A.
Hamdouch eds. (2012) International Handbook of
Social Innovation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.