SI2.ca

Understanding social innovation is emerging as a vital area of academic inquiry as well as a critically important issue for leaders in the voluntary, public and private sectors. One aspect of social innovation which has received relatively little attention is the interplay of social innovation and social institutions. Research on social innovation has touched on but tended not to systematically examine how a society’s institutions (the beliefs, values and rules that structure relationships and practice) facilitate and constrain the ability of actors to engage in social innovation. In the academic study of social institutions, the phenomenon of social innovation has served as the basis for a range of case studies (in such domains as HIV/AIDS treatment, poverty alleviation, and nutrition services), and while these studies have provided significant insight into institutional dynamics, the basic relationship between social institutions and social innovation has remained relatively unexamined.

The basic premise of this workshop is that for our understanding of social innovation and social institutions to advance, we need to focus more clearly and explicitly on the relationship between them. We believe that without a deeper understanding of their relationship, our conceptions of both social innovation and social institutions will remain unnecessarily conservative: work on social innovation will continue to highlight the potential for incremental change while overlooking the potential for radical transformations that either leverage or disrupt social institutions; research on social institutions will continue to focus on their constraining aspects, largely ignoring their role in facilitating social innovation.

Presenters at SI2 will be encouraged to explore the relationship between social innovation and social institutions in a wide range of ways: through systematic examinations of empirical material; through theoretical discussions of key issues; and through reflections on personal experience. An important goal of SI2 is to provide significant opportunity for new conversations to occur among participants from across disciplines and sectors, both through structured panels and roundtables, and through informal social interactions.

We are looking forward to this exciting event!

Tom Lawrence and Graham Dover