Faced with the significant challenges of our society, many social innovation challenges and projects provide solutions on their own scale. However, the leaders who develop these projects continue encountering difficulties in obtaining support and funding. The latter is often linked to the specificity of their innovation, which is still too little or poorly recognized. The social innovation dynamic requires even more recognition, support, and funding.
Three main types of needs for social innovation challenges
Managers who develop social innovation challenges and projects have support and funding needs similar to other managers of innovative projects (need for support in the 4 phases of the creation process: emergence, experimentation, dissemination, and evaluation). However, they encounter many obstacles related to the specificity of their innovation, which is still too little or poorly recognized.
Identifying support offers for social innovation
Leaders encounter difficulties in the face of the lack of readability and visibility of the support offered for social innovation challenges.
Risk financing
The financing of socially innovative challenges and projects implies that because of the characteristics of this form of innovation, patient capital is convinced of the long-term social and economic impacts.
Recognition of the specificities of a socially innovative project
Entrepreneurs encounter obstacles related to the following three characteristics of a social innovation approach: the experimentation phase, R&D in the human and social sciences, and the legal forms of social innovation companies.
The significant social innovation challenges to be tackled
To accelerate the development of social innovation and tackle social innovation challenges, several actions are to be carried out:
- Designing public policies favors social innovation and opens up tools for financing and supporting innovation to social innovation.
- Train and raise awareness among traditional innovation players; and social innovation actors to access traditional innovation financing to the development of mixed financing methods.
- Encourage convergent and multidisciplinary approaches that bring together researchers, civil society, businesses, and associations.
- Promote the exchange of practices to generate socially innovative projects and disseminate existing social innovations.
- Measure the social impacts of the projects developed.
