Topic for a large-scale integrating project: SSH.2013.3.2-1.

Social Innovation – empowering people, changing societies?

Context
Societies around the world are facing many of the same challenges, which are exacerbated by the economic and financial crisis. These challenges include, for example, tackling inequalities and demographic change, securing food, water and energy supply, combatting climate change and poverty, and improving the quality of life and employment. Moreover, the mounting costs of providing public services require major reforms of these services and greater government efficiency. However, the traditional ways in which the market, the state and the civil sector have responded to societal demands are no longer sufficient as technological progress and technological innovation reveal limitations when it comes to resolving pressing societal challenges alone.
Therefore, for most societal challenges, social innovations need to be taken into account, referring to changes in (production and consumption) habits, discourses, behaviour and values, strategies and policies, as well as organisational structures, processes, services and participation patterns. Through its process dimension, e.g. the active engagement of the citizen, social innovation is said to contribute to reshaping society in the direction of participation, empowerment and learning. Consequently, social innovation is not only responding to social needs and addressing societal challenges but also has the potential to improve society's capacity to act and innovate with a view to achieving systemic change.
However, there is still no sustained and systematic analysis of social innovation, its theories, characteristics and impacts, and this has led to social innovation being developed through a "bottom-up process" with little conceptualisation of the political-institutional environments needed for propelling social innovation, its economic, social and cultural values, the conditions for its sustainability and diffusion, and the roles of the actors and institutions involved. Therefore, the objectives of the research should be to elaborate a common understanding of social innovation, to understand how and under what conditions social innovation leads to change in existing structures, policies, institutions and behaviour, and to identify and assess the factors that are crucial for social innovation to have a sustainable social impact and to be scaled-up.
This topic is particularly suited to comparative and multidisciplinary research, and shall address both the European and the non-European dimension by covering an appropriate number of countries and a wide range of policy areas (such as energy, environment/climate change, health, water and food supply, mobility/transport, finance, development, employment, education, youth, family, social policies, etc.).

Research dimensions
Research should address most of the following issues:
− Cultural, religious and historical contexts should be considered through a comparative analysis of different practices and systems of social innovation across different world regions, with a view to elaborating a general theory of social innovation and to conceptualising and defining the value of the field as a driver for growth, social cohesion and political participation.
− Explore testable hypotheses regarding the conditions under which social innovations may have a sustainable social impact, and identify critical success factors at each stage of the social innovation cycle. There is a need to understand what is the actual role of social innovation for societal transformations and sustainable systemic change, including in times of economic crisis, as compared to technological innovation.
− Gaining a better understanding of the link between social innovation and behavioural change, between social innovation and participatory processes, the role of gender diversity and equality, skills and leadership for the development and implementation of social innovations, and of how creativity and arts trigger social innovation.
− In order to better understand how to scale-up social innovations and enhance their impact, there is a need for research on the diffusion processes of social innovations within and between countries as well as the analysis of critical points related to funding (including from the Structural Funds). In this context, the opportunities and risks of social media for enabling and diffusing social innovations need to be better understood.
− A crucial factor for the success for social innovation is the emergence of innovation networks in which the different groups of actors strike out along new paths in social change as part of an interactive process. How can such networks be identified, developed, supported and sustained? What is the specific role of the various actors involved? What role do networks play across different policy areas and countries? How do these interactive processes work and what practices make them successful ('good practices')?
− Activities should lead to methods and tools for developing social innovation experimentation and incubation.

Participation by non-European partners is encouraged.

Funding scheme: Collaborative project (large-scale integrating research project)