who does social
innovation
individuals, movements and organisations
there are many lenses through which to understand social innovation. for much of the last century it was understood within much broader frameworks
of thinking about social change, industrialisation and modernity. small innovations were seen as re ections of big dynamics. in the contrary approach advocated by karl popper and others, social innovation was the incremental and experimental alternative to the errors of utopian blueprints and violent revolution (our re ections on theories of change and their relevance to social innovation are contained in this endnote a, p50).
today most discussion of social innovation tends to adopt one of three main lenses for understanding how change happens: individuals, movements or organisations.
individuals – always taking no
as a question
in the rst social change is portrayed as having been driven by a very small number of heroic, energetic and impatient individuals. history is told as the story of how they remade the world, persuading and
cajoling the lazy and timid majority into change. robert owen, octavia hill and michael young are three people who embody this view of history.
the most important social innovator from the 18th century was arguably robert owen, born in 1771 at the dawn of the industrial revolution.8 by the turn of the century he had bought four textile factories in new lanark and was determined to
use them not just to make money but to remake
the world. arguing that people were naturally good but corrupted by harsh conditions, under owen’s management the cotton mills and village of new lanark became a model community. When owen arrived at new lanark children from as young as ve were working for 1 hours a day in the textile mills. he stopped employing children under ten and sent young children to newly built nursery and infant schools, while older children combined work and secondary school. in addition to schools new lanark set up a crèche for working mothers, free medical care, and comprehensive education, including evening classes. there were concerts, dancing, music-making and pleasant landscaped areas. his