Attachement 3: Social

ESF project 4895: Meer werk maken van innovatie voor werkgelegenheid en arbeidsmarkt
ANALYSIS FICHE OF LITERATURE
Ref. 1C
TITLE OF LITERATURE: the process of social innovation
AUTHOR : G. Mulgan
TYPE OF AUTHOR (academic, consultants, practitioners, other): practitioner
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE): MIT innovations spring 2006
ORIENTATION OF LITERATURE (check with X):
• innovation in general:
• innovation by / within the public sector:
• innovation oriented towards citizens:
• innovation oriented towards social and employment issues typically dealt with by ESF: X
LESSONS LEARNT REGARDING:
A. How to define innovation e.g. in types
Definition: innovative activities and services motivated by goal of meeting a social need and
predominantly diffused through organisations whose primary purposes are social.
B. How to formulate an innovation strategy (in terms of scope, types of innovation,
requirements)
Social innovations also follow the S-curve (early slow growth from committed supporters, then fast
take-of, then slowing down again). But it always required planting the seeds of an idea into may
minds.
C. How to organize innovation as a process in different stages?
Phase 1: Generating ideas by understanding needs and identifying potential solutions
Start with a need that is not met, coupled with an idea how it should be met.
a) Needs come from: angry individuals/groups or political movements, campaigns or from
observation.
b) Possibilities come from 1) new technology (eg internet) 2) new organizational forms 3) new
knowledge sometimes present in / used by positive deviants (those few who are successful
where most are not).

Few ideas emerge fully formed. Often innovators try, play and adjust. New ideas are also rarely new,
mostly they combine ideas that already exist. They straddle the boundaries of sectors and disciplines.
To really innovate pushing for a real challenge is necessary: go for the most difficult groups or issues.
Sometimes ideas can be bought on the open market (eg prizes via Innocentive platform). Also, there
are “labs” linking organisations and universities with a focus on particular themes.
Phase 2: developing, prototyping and piloting ideas
Wikipedia was a failure in its first outing. Before something works may take a few tries. Also, it may
take a while between proving something works in pilot, and it getting adopted mainstream. Investors
need to hold their nerve then.
Phase 3: Assessing, scaling up and diffusing
Creative bees (social entrepreneurs) need to find supportive trees (big organisations who can make
things happen at scale). Innovators therefore need to capture the imagination of a community of
supporters through courage and persistence. Good names / identities with good stories matter.
The skills and mindset for radical innovation are not the same as those to scale up and consolidate.
Social entrepreneurs need to let go at some moment.
Phase 4: Learning and evolving
An innovation consolidates in a particular context, then evolves towards new contexts (learning
again).
D. How to define outputs of innovation e.g. in terms of idea, concept, prototype…?
E. How to make decisions regarding progress of an innovation?
F. What roles exist for different actors in the innovation process? What competences are
required for these roles?
Individual leaders and also collective movements have led to many social innovations. In both cases,
the basis was discontent. A combination of exclusion, resentment, passion and commitment makes
social change possible.
Innovators require for understanding needs: a) empathy (eg use ethnography) b) personal
motivation (eg solve problems you have yourself or you care about)
They require for seeing possibilities: a) wide peripheral vision b) to link apparently unrelated
methods and ideas together .

G. How to organize interaction with external stakeholders (open innovation)?
H. Specific tools that are explained (list briefly for each tool in what stage, by which role, why,
how it is to be used).
a) Tool 1: Innovation accelerator like the Young Foundation launch pad. Seed money for
innovation teams that combine understanding of policy contexts with design, business,
growth, management.
Tool 2: government allows national rules to not apply in certain shielded spaces for
innovation

Ref. 2C
TITLE OF LITERATURE: Design as an enabler of social innovation
AUTHOR : S. Hjelm et al
TYPE OF AUTHOR (academic, consultants, practitioners, other): academic
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE): Swedish ESF council
• innovation oriented towards citizens: X
Social innovation focuses on well-being, inclusiveness and integration
Anything new that works to meet a social goal
Social both in end and in means.
Borne by citizens, based on citizen participation.
requirements)
People centered focus is what makes innovation sustainable in the longer term.
Social innovation works in two ways:
1) Innovation IN the public sector, the third sector or business related to the public sector.
2) Innovation for social goals or the goal to affect people’s behaviours and habits.
Pull, bottom up, people centered model instead of push model, where research gives rise to
innovation.
Reports New Public Management with its narrow goals and constant reporting and auditing as well
as its ignorance of the existence of networks of engaged citizens, to be an obstacle to creativity.

States design as a method of creating something people want to use as being able to tackle wicked
problems (infinite amount of parameters and possible solutions). Engineers are better at solving
restricted problems. Designers are therefore most useful at the start, whereas engineers can take
later on the concepts given by designers and solve them as “problems”. Design is user centred
+contextual + uses prototypes for feed-back and iteration. It is innovation made social as it is rooted
in analysis of the social situatedness of people’s needs, behaviours and resources.
Recommends a) Social design studios / incubators where individuals, NGOs, citizen networks,
companies, public sector can experiment together b) mutual competence development where
researchers and public servants learn about design and designers learn about societal issues (via
education, internships) c) databases of design practices d) networks for social innovation…
Inspiration, ideation, implementation.
Prototyping is essential: it focuses on experiencing by users. Experience is not the same as looking at
something.
Implementation should always be part of the brief. Designers should not just come up with ideas
and leave execution to others.
Funders could be public sector, voluntary sector, CSR funds from business, philanthropy, social
entrepreneurs.
a) Tool 1: 27th
Region France, Mindlab UK

Ref. 3C
TITLE OF LITERATURE: ABC of social innovation
AUTHOR : Forum for social innovation and social entrepreneurship
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE): id
Initiatives aimed at improving what is missing or not functioning in our social structure.
Often occurs in cross-sector context, where different stakeholders from different sectors of society
work together towards common goals.
Three types: 1) grassroots initiatives which in new ways meet social needs that are not being met by
the market or public sector eg street newspapers for the homeless 2) where boundaries between
sectors of society become blurred and where innovation targets the entire community eg microcredit
3) system changing aiming at values, cultures, strategies and politics.
Many are created by social entrepreneurs who combine sense of entreprise with a socially beneficial
goal. They are hybrids of non-profit, public and business sectors. They see new business potential
within challenges / needs without compromising the overall goal of having the greatest possible
benefit to society.
requirements)

a) Tool 1: Living labs at Malmo university. Tries to link different projects in the city together.
Sees how new media and social innovation can support them. They connect entrepreneurs,
researchers and practitioners (associations, officials, …). They also help set up workshops to
develop ideas and conduct small scale experimentation.
b) Tool 2: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/socialinnovationeurope/home
c) Tool 3: CIC in UK and UAV in Sweden: special corporation form for social businesses.

Ref. 4C
TITLE OF LITERATURE: Design in public and social innovation
AUTHOR : Geoff Mulgan
TYPE OF AUTHOR (academic, consultants, practitioners, other): practitioner
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE): NESTA
requirements)
Criticisms of design thinking:
1 what helps diffuse innovations is not yet integrated in design thinking (eg diffusion theory)
2 not so good at learning from others
3 Lack of attention to economics and organizational issues and cultures
4 well paid consultants who leave when the money is gone
C. How to organize innovation as a process in different stages
1 Understanding user experiences eg via ethnography to see how the world looks and feels to users
of services. Use 1) stories 2) videos/picture board to map the real experience. This reveals how
service systems fail to account for the fine grain of daily life. Individual services may work well but
the whole journey does not.

2 Ideation where on moves from diagnosis to ideas. See tools that are applied on inputs from
previous phase.
3 Rapid prototyping: learning from doing
Key is visualization (eg with graphic designers) and systems thinking (ask the right question,
rather than accept questions at face value).
The challenge is:
1 ensure teams have full mix of skills to be aware of organizational, economic, political and social
contexts and have project managers who can cover a range of fields and disciplines
2 Some designers need to have a mix of skills in one person
3 Project management to ensure that design is cheaper and leaves stronger skills in the
implementing organisations and communities
a) Tool 1: Region 27 France, Mindlab (Denmark), Sitra (Finland), Design council UK, DESIS,
Design Management Initiative
b) Tools 2 for ideation:

Ref 5C
TITLE OF LITERATURE: Social innovation – What it is, why it matters and how it can be
AUTHOR : Geoff Mulgan
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE): Oxford Said Business School
• innovation by / within the public sector: X
Social innovation: “new ideas that meet unmet needs”
requirements)
1. Generating ideas by understanding needs and identifying potential solutions
Starting point for innovation is an awareness of a need that is not being met and some
idea of how it could be met (e.g. by new technologies, new organizational forms)
2. Developing, prototyping and piloting ideas
Taking a promising idea and testing it out in practice. Few plans survive their first
encounter with reality wholly intact. Progress is often achieved more quickly by turning
the idea into a prototype or pilot and then galvanising enthousiasm.
3. Assessing then scaling up and diffusion good ones

An idea is proving itself in practice and can be grown through organic growth, replication,
adaptation or franchising.
4. Learning and evolving
Innovations continue to change, learning and adaptation turns the ideas into forms that
may be very different form the expectations of the pioneers; experience may show
unintended consequences or unexpected applications.
The above mentioned pattern is linear, it is a funnel model with stages and at each stage a decision
has to be made based on judgments of the realistic potential of the idea. The waterfall model of
research funding captures a similar idea: that the amount of basic research affects the number of
innovations.
But experience and the history of innovation suggests that there are very real flaws with this model.
Some of the most important innovations evolve in a zig zag line with their end uses being very
different from those that were originally envisaged. Sometimes action precedes understanding,
sometimes doing things catalyses the ideas. There are also feedback loops between every stage,
which makes real innovations more like multiple spirals than straight lines.
A successful organization needs to be simultaneously focused on existing activities, emerging
ones and more radical possibilities that could be the mainstream activities of the future.
Hence, ‘effective leaders’ and the teams around them need to focus on four horizons for
decision-making:
1. Day-to-day management, efficiency and firefighting
2. Effective implementation and incremental innovation over the medium term of 1 – 3
years
3. Developing more radical options – including in different fields – that could become
mainstream in 3 – 20 years
4. Taking account of generational timescales – particularly in relation to climate change and
issues like pensions

Sometimes innovation is presented as a distraction from efficiency and performance
management. The truth is that any competent leadership should be able to do both – with
time, money and management effort devoted to each of these horizons, and appropriate
organizational structures and cultures for each task.
a) Tool 1:

Ref. 6C
TITLE OF LITERATURE: How to grow social innovations
AUTHOR : Anna Davies et al
TYPE OF AUTHOR (academic, consultants, practitioners, other): practitioner (Young Foundation)
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE): International social innovation research
conference, 2-4 September 2013, Oxford
• innovation in general: x
• innovation by / within the public sector: x
• innovation oriented towards social and employment issues typically dealt with by ESF:
The article distinguished between social innovation (systems), social entrepreneurship (person) and
social enterprise (organization) with the first being the broadest and the second and last more
narrow subsets. This means social entrepreneurship can exist without social enterprise but not the
reverse (see below).
Social innovation
--------------------------------------------------
Social entrepreneurship
-------------------
Social enterprise
-------
The article makes the link between its definition of social innovation and types of “growth” (see
below).
• New social entreprise = scaling studied by (social) management/enterprise studies;

• New legislation = diffusion of policy studied by political science and public administration;
• New behaviour = diffusion as behavior change, studied by psychology, behavioural
economics and communication studies ;
• New service = diffusion as implementation / systems change studied by change management
an organizational diffusion theory.
Some remarks are given about this categorisation:
• The categories interact e.g. new behavior shapes and is shaped by new legislation.
• The categories represent tangible forms of innovation. Perhaps also new “concepts” should
be included?
• If we are interested in large scale social transformation, is it not more important to think
about how many social innovations of different forms are needed to constitute a
transformation?
requirements)
The article focuses on understanding of how social innovations grow. This means it focuses on the
“final” stage of innovation. They review the concepts of “scaling” as well as “diffusion”.
Scaling
Scaling is understood to refer to increasing social impact, rather than to growing an organization (as
is the common understanding of “scale” in business).
Several forms of scaling are provided:
• Dissemination/sharing: providing information and assistance to others looking to bring an
innovation to their community;
• Affiliation: creating formal relations with specific agreements with others;
• Branching: creating local sites through one organization (growth within an organization).
This represents a spectrum of low to high control and high to low scaling of impact. Scale and control
are seen as trade-offs.
There are four issues with this way of thinking about “scaling”:
1) It stays rooted in the idea that it is a focal organization that needs to scale, rather than the
impact of an innovation;
2) It assumes something starts small and then gets bigger (e.g. from pilot to mainstream with
more and more people served). But sometimes innovation happens at scale directly;
3) It is linked to ideas of standardization and control whereas in the social field, reinvention and
adaptation will always be very important (e.g. co-production, personalization, the state being
“relational”,… );

4) It fails to capture the political nature of much social innovation where e.g. regulations, laws…
need to be changed. “Scaling” seems poorly aligned with social innovation as developing
new legislation or re-designing existing services.
Diffusion
Where “scaling” focuses on organisations and their “growth”, diffusion focuses on adopters of an
innovation as well as on the innovation itself.
Diffusion theory comes from E. Rogers. He launched key concepts relating to the nature of the
adopter e.g. as early adopters, early majorities , etc. He also suggested that key attributes of an
innovation determine its likelihood of adoption.
However, it should be understood that “adopter” characteristics can change depending on the
innovation and that different people also perceive the attributes of an innovation differently.
Organisational diffusion theory shifted away from persons adopting innovations as the unit of
analysis to organisations. This is still a field in full development but major themes exist:
• Innovations have a hard core and a soft periphery (structures and systems that need to form
around it to support implementation of the hard core);
• Rarely is the adoption process staged in a predictable way (e.g. awareness, evaluation,
adoption, implementation);
• Competing bodies of evidence will be discussed amongst professional networks rather than
one piece of evidence being the basis of adoption;
• To be assimilated, innovations need to make sense in a way that relates somehow to
previous experience and understanding (e.g. Weick’s “sensemaking” concept);
• Diffusion is closely connected to existing power structures and interests. This remains under
researched as a topic.
Strengths and weaknesses of “diffusion”:
• Scaling suggests that spreading an innovation can be controlled and planned for while
diffusion suggests that it is not linear or orderly;
• Diffusion is a social rather than a rational process: the way people interact is more important
that the evidence of the advantages of an innovation;
• Diffusion suggests gradual spread whereas adoption of some innovations resembles more
sudden tipping points or cascades;
• There is little practical advice coming from this strain or research.

a) Tool 1:

Ref. 7C
TITLE OF LITERATURE: Scaling social entreprises
AUTHOR : Christiana Weber et al
TYPE OF AUTHOR (academic, consultants, practitioners, other): academics
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE): Frontiers of entrepreneurship research, vol 32,
issue 19, article 3, 2012
• innovation oriented towards social and employment issues typically dealt with by ESF:
requirements)
This article focuses on the final stage of innovation: scaling. It takes the perspective of social
enterprise.
Scalability is understood as “increasing the impact a social purpose organization produces to better
match the magnitude of the social need or problem it seeks to address”.
This is determined by the characteristics of an operating model for an innovation in terms of its:
• Replicability: capacity to adopt structures, processes, products, services , habits;
• Adaptability: capacity to adjust the former;
• Transferability: based on the two former concepts.
Success factors are:
1. Commitment of the individuals driving the scaling process: this can be founders of a social
enterprise, management, staff or even members of the network of an organisation

2. Management competence: acting in a business-like manner while preserving the social
mission;
3. Entire or partial replicability of the operational model: focus is possible on core elements of
the operational model that induce social impact most effectively, allowing to reduce the
complexity of the model;
4. Ability to meet social demands: this refers to the capacity to run the social activities in a
sustainable way e.g. because the purchasing power of the target group can contribute
resources (incl. financial), because market forces can be stimulated or because partners can
be found with complementary resources ;
5. Ability to obtain necessary resources to scale: this refers to the specific resources required
not to run an operations model (see the previous factor) but to scale it. This includes
financial, human and social (networks and supporters) capital.;
6. Potential effectiveness of scaling with others: this is determined by factors 3, 4 and 5 (if a
model is replicable, sustainable and resources to scale can be obtained, this presents a
greater potential for leverage for others of the experience gained with the model) combined
with the attractiveness of the social organization for partners and the existence of relevant
partners;
7. Adaptability: degree of (dis)similarity with already served customers, contexts and already
provided products and services determines how easy it is for an organisation to adapt.
However, systemic innovation explicitly aims to adapt the context to the innovation rather
than the other way around. The key question is therefore if the organization has the capacity
to adapt the operating model or whether it can change the context.
By using these 7 elements, a choice can be made as to which of the following four strategies for
scaling is appropriate.
1) Capacity building: increasing impact on its own, without needing adaptation to the
environment
2) One adjacency move: if impact can be increased by one organization but requires adaptation
e.g. to new target group, new context, etc.
3) Agreement incl. joint ventures, franchising if impact cannot be reached by one organization
and adaptation is required and possible.
4) Diffusion of knowledge incl. open source if no adaptation required and impact cannot be
reached by one organization on its own
The whole model is shown below.

a) Tool 1:

Ref: 8C
TITLE OF LITERATURE: Collective impact
AUTHOR : John Kania et al
TYPE OF AUTHOR (academic, consultants, practitioners, other): academics
COMMISSIONER OF LITERATURE (IF APPROPRIATE): Stanford Social Innovation review, winter 2011
• innovation oriented towards social and employment issues typically dealt with by ESF: x
The article focuses on social innovation as being more systemic, rather than focused only on one
point of contact with citizens.
An example from education is given where “Strive” gathered 300 leaders of local organisations
(city officials, foundations, schools, non-profits, advocacy…) that could reflect on the entire path
of young people from cradle to career. They were allocated to 15 Student Success Networks by
type of activity (eg tutoring, early childhood,…) and met for two hours every two weeks for three
years, supported by coaches and facilitators. They developed shared performance indicators,
discussed progress, learned from each other and aligned their efforts to each other.
Behind this is a centralised infrastructure with dedicated staff and a structured process that leads
to a shared agenda, measurement, communication and mutually reinforcing activities among all
participants. The article gives more such examples.
The idea is that large scale social change comes from better cross-sector coordination rather
than isolated interventions of individual organisations.
Isolated impact (as opposed to collective) thinking works as follows: funders try to ascertain
which organization will make the largest contribution to solving a social issue, grantees compete
and are judged on their own potential, evaluation aims at isolating the impact made by this

grantee on its own. The hope is that effective actions then become replicated to extend their
impact.
However, this is a flawed approach as complex problems can only be solved by cross-sector
coalitions that include the governmental and commercial actors whose interplay gives rise to the
social issues in the first place. It cannot be addressed by a solitary non-profit actor.
Complex or “adaptive” problems are different from “technical” problems. The latter have a well-
defined problem with a clear answer and one or a few organisations that can implement this.
The former are the opposite and hence requires learning by the stakeholders involved in the
problem. This is referred to as a “systemic approach” to social impact.
requirements)
The article refers to “scaling” as replication of the collective impact approach (not of its specific
activities) to other places. E.g. Strive was transferred to nine other communities. These were
offered a set of tools derived from the first community, adaptable to their own needs and
resources. New communities need to take ownership and go through their own process, but they
can go much faster by drawing on the existing experiences. They do not need to start their
process from scratch.
In this approach, five conditions are seen as crucial:
1) Common agenda: each organization tends to have a different understanding of a social issue.
This needs to be discussed and resolved. It does not mean everyone needs to agree on
everything. Disagreements are reported to continue. But they must agree on primary goals.
2) Shared measurement: the level of measurement is the community. Hence no single actor
can deliver on these measures. Measurement is used for learning (e.g. it was discovered that
children regress during the summer break and that it is important to bridge this; they
experimented with an intervention that had significant influence) .
3) Mutually reinforcing activities: all participants should not do the same but work together.
Each organization is free to chart its own course but must situate this in the shared vision
and be informed by shared measurement.
4) Continuous communication: it takes time to build trust. People need to see their interests
are treated fairly and decisions are made on the basis of objective evidence. For this monthly
or bi-weekly meetings are held between CEO level leaders. Skipping meetings or sending
lower level delegates was not accepted. The meetings are facilitated.
5) Backbone support organization: it takes care of three key roles:
a. Project manager and logistics / admin support
b. Data / technology manager
c. Facilitator

Such an organisation uses the principles of adaptive leadership 1) focus people’s attention
and create a sense of urgency 2) apply pressure to stakeholders without overwhelming them
3) frame issues in a way that that presents opportunities as well as difficulties 4) strength to
mediate conflict along stakeholders.
Funders should support a long term process of social change without identifying any particular
solution in advance. Systemic change ultimately depends on a sustained campaign to increase the
capacity and coordination of an entire field. Funders should:
a) Take responsibility for assembling the elements of a solution
b) Create a movement for change
c) Include solutions from outside the non-profit sector
d) Use actionable knowledge to influence behavior and improve performance
a) Tool 1:
See: http://www.strivetogether.org/

Attachement 3: Social

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Attachement 3: Social