summary
1. the results of social innovation – new ideas
that meet unmet needs – are all around us. they include fair trade and restorative justice, hospices and kindergartens, distance learning and traf c calming. many social innovations were successfully promoted by the young foundation in its previous incarnations under michael young (including some 60 organisations such as the open university, Which?, healthline and international alert). over the last two centuries, innumerable social innovations, from cognitive behavioural therapy for prisoners
to Wikipedia, have moved from the margins to the mainstream. as this has happened, many have passed through the three stages that schopenhauer identi ed for any new ‘truth’: ‘first, it is ridiculed. second, it is violently opposed. third, it is accepted as being self-evident.’
2. these processes of change are sometimes understood as resulting from the work of heroic individuals (such as robert owen or muhammad yunus); sometimes as resulting from much broader movements of change (such as feminism and