Social innovation continues to call upon multiple definitions. A majority agrees that it develops new responses to poorly or poorly met social needs in all sectors: food, mobility, energy, housing, environment, health, etc. Supported by different actors, social innovation brings practical solutions to complex issues that neither the State nor the market can respond to alone.
The dimensions of innovation
To qualify an innovation, we can look at the nature of the novelty it introduces. Six dimensions are identified, including social innovation.
Innovations often combine several dimensions. They can have different intensities, from incremental innovation (improvement of what already exists) to radical innovation (in-depth transformation).
Definition of social innovation
Social innovation is, therefore, the dimension that provides new responses to social needs that are little or poorly satisfied.
“Social innovation consists of developing new responses to new or poorly satisfied social needs in the current market and social policy conditions, involving the participation and cooperation of the actors concerned, particularly users and users. These innovations concern both the product or service and the method of organization and distribution. They go through several steps: emergence, experimentation, dissemination, evaluation.”
Three categories of actors drive social innovation
Entrepreneurs and Innovators
The voluntary sector has historically the leading laboratory for social innovations. Through its proximity and in-depth knowledge of populations and territories, it can detect existing social needs that are little or badly satisfied, as well as new ones, and provide responses through experimentation and modeling of solutions created.
New generations of social entrepreneurs are also developing social innovations to provide solutions to significant societal challenges. Finally, traditional companies can also develop this type of project.
The citizens
We are talking about citizen innovation, carried out by one or more volunteer citizens committing to act and respond, at their level, to the significant social challenges of today.
Public Policies
This is about social innovation in public policies, carried out by public actors, in particular, Regional Councils who seek to re-examine how their public policies are designed and implemented by launching experiments with a multidisciplinary perspective ( citizens, service designers, urban planners, etc.).
Social innovation concerns all sectors
Faced with the significant societal challenges that affect all sectors, many social innovation projects provide solutions on their scale.