Social Innovation - Developments Since 2000

Developments Since 2000

Academic research, blogs and websites feature social innovation, along with organizations working on the boundaries of research and practical action. Topics include:

• Innovation in public services was pioneered particularly in some Scandinavian and Asian countries. Governments are increasingly recognizing that innovation requires healthcare, schooling and democracy.
• Social entrepreneurship, which is the practice of creating new organizations focusing on non- market activities.
• Business, particularly in services.
• Open source innovation, in which the intellectual property involved in a produce or service is made freely available.
• Complex adaptive systems, which have built-in mechanisms to help them adapt to changing circumstances.
• Collaborative approaches which involve stakeholders who are not directly responsible for some activity, such as stockholders and unions collaborating on business issue and business collaborating with government on regulatory issues.
• Innovation diffusion
• Localized influences that make some localities particularly innovative.
• Institutional or system entrepreneurship which focuses on agents who work at a broad system level in order to create the conditions which will allow innovations to have a lasting impact.