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Towards Advancing Understanding of Social Innovation

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Challenge Social Innovation

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Abstract

This paper advances understanding of social innovation on two fronts. First it reflects on the role and responsibility of researchers in advancing social innovation and traces the purpose and activities of the New Zealand Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre to illustrate how academic institutes might catalyze social innovation. Second, it highlights parallel discourses following either more micro- or macro-level leanings. At the micro level, accompanying a growing literature on social entrepreneurship is an embedded discussion on social innovation linked to innovations by social entrepreneurs. More overarching research centres on broad processes of innovation, implications of a new innovation paradigm and social innovations concerning societal issues. Bringing these two research streams closer and bridging dichotomous micro-macro perspectives, is necessary for a holistic view of innovation that recognizes social innovation as a crucial facet of innovation systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Maori are the indigenous people of NZ.

  2. 2.

    Pukapuka is in the Northern Cook Islands.

  3. 3.

    Term used for people living in NZ who identify with the Pacific Islands because of their ancestry and heritage.

  4. 4.

    Gramsci’s words provide the best explanation of the ‘organic intellectual’: ‘Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields’ (1971: 5). Furthermore ‘all men are intellectuals … but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals (1971: 9).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. New Zealand Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre, Massey University School of Economics and Finance, Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand

    Anne de Bruin

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  1. Anne de Bruin
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Correspondence to Anne de Bruin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Zentrale Wissenschaftliche Einrichtung, Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund, TU Dortmund, Evinger Platz 17, Dortmund, 44339, Germany

    Hans-Werner Franz

  2. Centre for Social Innovation, Linke Wienzeile 246, Vienna, 1150, Austria

    Josef Hochgerner

  3. Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund, Evinger Platz 17, Dortmund, 44339, Germany

    Jürgen Howaldt

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de Bruin, A. (2012). Towards Advancing Understanding of Social Innovation. In: Franz, HW., Hochgerner, J., Howaldt, J. (eds) Challenge Social Innovation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32879-4_22

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