what social innovation is
4 there is of course a large literature on the meaning of the word ‘social’ and its limitations which we don’t pursue here (see for example the recent work of bruno latour).
defining social innovation
innovation is often given complex de nitions. We prefer the simple one: ‘new ideas that work’. this differentiates innovation from improvement, which implies only incremental change; and from creativity and invention, which are vital to innovation but miss out the hard work of implementation and diffusion that makes promising ideas useful. social innovation refers to new ideas that work in meeting social goals. de ned in this way the term has, potentially, very wide boundaries – from gay partnerships to new ways of using mobile phone texting, and from new lifestyles to new products and services. We have also suggested a somewhat narrower de nition:
‘innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are predominantly developed and diffused through organisations whose primary purposes are social.’4