Download or read book Theories of Social Innovation written by Danielle Logue and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As we grapple with how to respond to some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as inequality, poverty and climate change, there is growing global interest in ‘social innovation’ as a potential solution. But what exactly is ‘social innovation’? This book describes three ways to theorise social innovation when seeking to manage and organize for both social and economic progress.

Download or read book The Evolution of Social Innovation written by Frances Westley and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-29 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time where governments and civil society organizations are putting ever-greater stock in social innovation as a route to transformation, understanding what characterizes social innovation with transformative potential is important. Exciting and promising ideas seem to die out as often as they take flight, and market mechanisms, which go a long way towards contributing to successful technical innovations, play an insignificant role in social innovations. The cases in this book explore the evolution of successful social innovation through time, from the ideas which catalysed social and system entrepreneurs to create new processes, platforms, projects and programs to fundamental social shifts in culture, economics, laws and policies which occurred as a result. In doing so, the authors shed light on how to recognize transformative potential in the early stage innovations we see today.

Download or read book A Social Theory of Innovation written by Alexander Styhre and published by Copenhagen Business School Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contemporary economy is primarily understood through the rationalist and formalist lenses of economic theory and its accompanying (mainstream) theories of organization and management. In this corpus of work, the economy is commonly portrayed as emerging on the basis of the calculated and instrumental use of heterogeneous resources. Innovation - the capacity to produce new goods and services, being of key importance in a competitive capitalist economic regime - is a joint collaborative process embedded in social action, i.e., through forms of agency. In contrast to individualist, calculative, and utilitarian images of economic agency, sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and others have demonstrated that economic agency is determined in many cases by social and cultural conditions that extend beyond the narrow sphere of instrumental economic behavior. A Social Theory of Innovation makes a connection between innovation, economic agency, and three complementary perspectives - i.e. those of playfulness, reciprocity, and squandering (the conspicuous and symbolic waste of excess resources) - in terms of being three principles that underlie innovative and creative work. Rather than postulating the homo oeconomicus model of economic agency - prescribed by neoclassical economic theory - as the only possible and legitimate image of economic agency, alternative models exist which in various ways contribute to our understanding of how and why innovation is produced in contemporary society. The book draws on a diverse corpus of literature from management studies, economics, economic sociology, and the humanities to provide a less confined and narrow image of innovation and economic agency. This book is intended for undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate business school curricula in both economic sociology and other educational programs addressing the organization of the economy and society at large.

Download or read book Social Innovation and Social Policy written by Baglioni, Simone and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2018-01-17 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the term social innovation, or SI, has entered mainstream policy discourse; broadly construed, SI refers to pioneering, effective solutions to social problems that benefit society at large rather than individuals. This book explores the full meaning of SI and what it offers to people analyzing social policy, including the origins and background of the concept, the reasons for its rise to prominence, and the ways it has thus far been applied. Does it actually represent a significant departure in theory or practice, or is it merely a rhetorical change? Simone Baglioni and Stephen Sinclair offer here a rich analysis of the concept that will enable practitioners to reach informed conclusions.

Download or read book Challenge Social Innovation written by Hans-Werner Franz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, social innovation has experienced a steep career. Numerous national governments and large organisations like the OECD, the European Commission and UNESCO have adopted the term. Social innovation basically means that people adopt new social practices in order to meet social needs in a different or more effective way. Prominent examples of the past are the Red Cross and the social welfare state or, at present, the internet 2.0 transforming our communication and cooperation schemes, requiring new management concepts, even empowering social revolutions. The traditional concept of innovation as successful new technological products needs fundamental rethinking in a society marked by knowledge and services, leading to a new and enriched paradigm of innovation. There is multiple evidence that social innovation will become of growing importance not only concerning social integration, equal opportunities and dealing with the greenhouse effects but also with regard to preserving and expanding the innovative capacity of companies and societies. While political authorities stress the social facets of social innovation, this book also encompasses its societal and systemic dimensions, collecting the scientific expertise of renowned experts and scholars from all over the world. Based on the contributions of the first world-wide science convention on social innovation from September 2011 in Vienna, the book provides an overview of scientific approaches to this still relatively new field. Forewords by Agnès HUBERT (Member of the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) of the European Commission) and Antonella Noya (Senior Policy Analyst at OECD, manager of the OECD LEED Forum on Social Innovations)

Download or read book Social Innovation written by Mulgan, Geoff and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 21st century has brought a cornucopia of new knowledge and technologies. But there has been little progress in our ability to solve social problems using social innovation – the deliberate invention of new solutions to meet social needs - across the globe. Geoff Mulgan is a pioneer in the global field of social innovation. Building on his experience advising international governments, businesses and foundations, he explains how it provides answers to today’s global social, economic and sustainability issues. He argues for matching R&D in technology and science with a socially focused R&D and harnessing creative imagination on a larger scale than ever before. Weaving together history, ideas, policy and practice, he shows how social innovation is now coming of age, offering a comprehensive view of what can be done to solve the global social challenges we face.

Download or read book A Social Theory of Innovation written by Alexander Styhre and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Social Innovation written by Weerakoon, Chamindika and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2020-12-25 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social innovation is identified as a mechanism response to burning social challenges and the evolution of hybrid organizations such as social enterprises. As a result, there is an overwhelming growing interest among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to know more about the significant concept of social innovation. Despite this significance, it is often argued that the meaning of social innovation is ambiguous and vague with theory lagging social innovation practice as the field is nascent, emerging, and remains underdeveloped. This may impede the research endeavors of conceptualizing and establishing its socio-economic underpinnings and the legitimization of the field. Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Social Innovation illuminates and consolidates multiple views of social innovation theory, research, and practice, which to date have not been presented in one publication. The book provides an in-depth theoretical and practical understanding coupled with an assessment of the current research in multidisciplinary perspectives complemented by case studies representing each knowledge cluster in social innovation research. In this unique way, this book links theory to practice demonstrating praxis. While highlighting topics such as social enterprise, urban studies, management, ecological resilience, and social policy and networks, this book is ideal for students, academics, practitioners, researchers, and entrepreneurs looking to expand their knowledge, skills, and passion, and to sustainably pursue their social missions to bring about real social change that can transform communities and ignite innovative approaches to solving social challenges.

Download or read book Cooperatives and Social Innovation written by D. Rajasekhar and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses social innovations by cooperatives from the Asia and Pacific region. Social innovations emerge when the state and market in developing countries find it difficult to solve problems such as poverty, hunger, ill health, poor education systems, inadequate drinking water and poor sanitation. These countries also face barriers to economic growth such as climate change, poor governance, unequal opportunities and social exclusion. This volume therefore addresses the following questions. What are the distinctive features of social innovations by cooperatives? How social innovations bring in changes in the process and outcome of development? After presenting theories of social innovation and a critical review of cooperatives and social innovation, the book presents 15 chapters on social innovations by cooperatives in the Asia Pacific region. These social innovations are related to health insurance, community based tourism, disaster response, climate smart agriculture, use of social media for youth empowerment, training for the emergence of second-line leaders in cooperatives, social inclusion through innovative finance, profitable marketing of organic produce to strengthen economic status of small farmers, digital auction and value addition for income security of farmer members, collaboration between cooperative members and workers for the mutual benefit, worker cooperatives, women leadership and participation, building union-cooperative partnership in finance and rating of cooperatives to promote transparency and accountability. A chapter on innovative services of cooperatives during the time of Covid19 is also included. This volume will be quite significant for co-operators, researchers, teachers, practitioners and policy-makers at the global level. The theme is relevant for international development community and national cooperatives with concern for their communities, which is the seventh cooperative principle of International Cooperative Alliance and the Sustainable Development Goal of the UN.

Download or read book Design When Everybody Designs written by Ezio Manzini and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-03-06 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of design, both expert and nonexpert, in the ongoing wave of social innovation toward sustainability. In a changing world everyone designs: each individual person and each collective subject, from enterprises to institutions, from communities to cities and regions, must define and enhance a life project. Sometimes these projects generate unprecedented solutions; sometimes they converge on common goals and realize larger transformations. As Ezio Manzini describes in this book, we are witnessing a wave of social innovations as these changes unfold—an expansive open co-design process in which new solutions are suggested and new meanings are created. Manzini distinguishes between diffuse design (performed by everybody) and expert design (performed by those who have been trained as designers) and describes how they interact. He maps what design experts can do to trigger and support meaningful social changes, focusing on emerging forms of collaboration. These range from community-supported agriculture in China to digital platforms for medical care in Canada; from interactive storytelling in India to collaborative housing in Milan. These cases illustrate how expert designers can support these collaborations—making their existence more probable, their practice easier, their diffusion and their convergence in larger projects more effective. Manzini draws the first comprehensive picture of design for social innovation: the most dynamic field of action for both expert and nonexpert designers in the coming decades.

Download or read book Innovation and Scaling for Impact written by Christian Seelos and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation and Scaling for Impact forces us to reassess how social sector organizations create value. Drawing on a decade of research, Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair transcend widely held misconceptions, getting to the core of what a sound impact strategy entails in the nonprofit world. They reveal an overlooked nexus between investments that might not pan out (innovation) and expansion based on existing strengths (scaling). In the process, it becomes clear that managing this tension is a difficult balancing act that fundamentally defines an organization and its impact. The authors examine innovation pathologies that can derail organizations by thwarting their efforts to juggle these imperatives. Then, through four rich case studies, they detail innovation archetypes that effectively sidestep these pathologies and blend innovation with scaling. Readers will come away with conceptual models to drive progress in the social sector and tools for defining the future of their organizations.

Download or read book Constructing Organizational Life written by Thomas B. Lawrence and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the social sciences, scholars are increasingly showing how people 'work' to construct organizational life, including the rules and routines that shape and enable organizational activity, the identities of people who occupy organizations, and the societal norms and assumptions that provide the context for organizational action. The idea of work emphasizes the ways in which people and groups engage in purposeful, reflexive efforts rooted in an awareness of organizational life as constructed in human interaction and changeable through human effort. Studies of these efforts have identified new forms of work including emotion work, identity work, boundary work, strategy work, institutional work, and a host of others. Missing in these conversations, however, is a recognition that these forms of work are all part of a broader phenomenon driven by historical shifts that began with modernity and dramatically accelerated through the twentieth century. This book introduces the social-symbolic work perspective, which addresses this broader phenomenon. The social-symbolic work perspective integrates diverse streams of research to examine how people purposefully and reflexively work to construct organizational life, including the identities, technologies, boundaries, and strategies that constitute their organizations. In this book, the authors define social-symbolic work and introduce three forms - self work, organization work, and institutional work. Social-symbolic work highlights people's efforts to construct the social world, and focuses attention on the motivations, practices, resources, and effects of those efforts. This book explores eight distinct streams of social-symbolic work research, drawing on a broad range of examples from the worlds of business, politics, sports, social movements, and many others. It provides researchers, students, and practitioners with an integrative theoretical framework useful in understanding social-symbolic work, a survey of the main forms of social-symbolic work, a rich set of theoretical opportunities to inspire new studies, and practical methodological guidance for empirical research on social-symbolic work.

Download or read book The International Handbook on Social Innovation written by Frank Moulaert and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ÔThe challenges of poverty and social exclusion cannot be fully resolved through conventional public sector policies and market-led innovation. The case studies in this Handbook capture some of the key success factors of socially innovative action in different socio-economic contexts. This Handbook will inspire readers as it highlights the creativity and commitment of diverse enterprises and movements working for social innovation.Õ Ð Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlements, United Republic of Tanzania, and retired UN Under Secretary General, immediate former Executive Director of UN-HABITAT ÔSocial innovation may not be a new idea but it is clearly an idea whose time has come, not least because the traditional models of innovation Ð narrowly framed technical models Ð have run their course and no longer resonate in a world of societal challenges. This Handbook has two great merits Ð it brings conceptual rigour to the debate and it provides compelling narratives of social innovation in practice.Õ Ð Kevin Morgan, Cardiff University, UK ÔIn an era where social innovation is re-emerging as an important policy framework for bringing social transformation, this volume is a significant contribution to the theory and practice of social innovation. The incremental discussion from concepts to theory to practice and then to social innovation research is supported by cases literally from all over the globe. It moves the discourse from isolated models of neighbourhood engagements and social enterprises, to a comprehensive, multidimensional approach combining needs, social relations and empowerment. A must read for academicians, learners, practitioners and policy makers alike.Õ Ð S. Parasuraman, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India ÔSocial innovation is an important instrument for understanding how contemporary societies deal with social change and how social practices and policies intended to combat poverty and social exclusion are developed and implemented effectively. The Handbook offers a valuable contribution to the development of a clear, transdisciplinary and critical understanding of social innovation practices. The reader will find an in-depth discussion of the most important theoretical approaches to the concept and a thorough exposition of the epistemological and methodological framework for research in social innovation. The volume includes a number of interesting case studies in different areas of social change and issues of policy and governance.Õ Ð Enzo Mingione, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy This enriching Handbook covers many aspects of the scientific and socio-political debates on social innovation today. The contributors provide an overview of theoretical perspectives, methodologies and instructive experiences from all continents, as well as implications for collective action and policy. They argue strongly for social innovation as a key to human development. The Handbook defines social innovation as innovation in social relations within both micro and macro spheres, with the purpose of satisfying unmet or new human needs across different layers of society. It connects social innovation to empowerment dynamics, thus giving a political character to social movements and bottom-up governance initiatives. Together these should lay the foundations for a fairer, more democratic society for all. This interdisciplinary work, written by scholars collaborating to develop a joint methodological perspective toward social innovation agency and processes, will be invaluable for students and researchers in social science and humanities. It will also appeal to policy makers, policy analysts, lobbyists and activists seeking to give inspiration and leadership from a social innovation perspective.

Download or read book New Frontiers in Social Innovation Research written by Alex Nicholls and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-09-18 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access under a CC BY license. Interest in social innovation continues to rise, from governments setting up social innovation 'labs' to large corporations developing social innovation strategies. Yet theory lags behind practice, and this hampers our ability to understand social innovation and make the most of its potential. This collection brings together work by leading social innovation researchers globally, exploring the practice and process of researching social innovation, its nature and effects. Combining theoretical chapters and empirical studies, it shows how social innovation is blurring traditional boundaries between the market, the state and civil society, thereby developing new forms of services, relationships and collaborations. It takes a critical perspective, analyzing potential downsides of social innovation that often remain unexplored or are glossed over, yet concludes with a powerful vision of the potential for social innovation to transform society. It aims to be a valuable resource for students and researchers, as well as policymakers and others supporting and leading social innovation.

Download or read book Innovation Society Today written by Werner Rammert and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book offers new theoretical perspectives on innovation, analyzes innovation processes in diverse innovation fields, and presents case studies that reflect the diversity of innovations fields. To what extent and in what sense does innovation characterize our societies today? Innovations are no longer limited to the economic sphere; we find them in almost all areas of society today. Diverse actors generate innovations in different, increasingly reflexive ways. New concepts, practices, and institutional forms such as open source, crowdfunding, or citizen panels expand the spectrum.

Download or read book Using Media for Social Innovation written by Aneta Podkalicka and published by Intellect (UK). This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a critical road map for understanding and researching "social innovation media"--initiatives that look for new solutions to seemingly intractable social problems by combining creativity, media technologies, and engaged collectives in their design and implementation. Presenting a number of case studies, including campaigns dealing with young people, Indigenous peoples, human rights, and environmental issues, the book takes a close look at the guiding principles, assumptions, goals, practices, and outcomes of these experiments, revealing the challenges they face, the components of their innovation, and the cultural economy within which they operate.

Download or read book Sociology of Economic Innovation written by Francesco Ramella and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a sociological overview of the theories and research on economic innovation. Over the past few decades, the economics of innovation has given rise to a lively flow of studies, and innovation studies continues to develop as an interdisciplinary field of research. Sociology in general, and economic sociology in particular, have already made a significant contribution to innovation and continue to play a crucial role in this emerging field. This book presents an integrated sociological approach to the study of economic innovation. It explores the key theories and sociological research on innovation, as well as other contributions to the field of Innovation Studies from economists, geographers, and psychologists. Ramella argues that in order to understand the processes of innovation, it is necessary to look at the actors of innovation, at the relations that exist between them and at the sectoral and territorial contexts in which they operate. For students, this book includes international case studies throughout, as well as further study questions at the end of each chapter.