A calculation of the social returns to innovation /Benjamin F. Jones and Lawrence H. Summers --Innovation and human capital policy /John Van Reenen --Immigration policy levers for US innovation and start-ups /Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr --Scientific grant funding /Pierre Azoulay and Danielle Li --Tax policy for innovation /Bronwyn H. Hall --Taxation and innovation: what do we know? /Ufuk Akcigit and Stefanie Stantcheva --Government incentives for entrepreneurship /Josh Lerner.
In recent years, the term social innovation, or SI, has entered mainstream policy discourse; broadly construed, SI refers to pioneering, effective solutions to social problems that benefit society at large rather than individuals. This book explores the full meaning of SI and what it offers to people analyzing social policy, including the origins and background of the concept, the reasons for its rise to prominence, and the ways it has thus far been applied. Does it actually represent a significant departure in theory or practice, or is it merely a rhetorical change? Simone Baglioni and Stephen Sinclair offer here a rich analysis of the concept that will enable practitioners to reach informed conclusions.
This open access book offers unique and novel views on the social innovation landscape, tools, practices, pedagogies, and research in the context of higher education. International, multi-disciplinary academics and industry leaders present new developments, research evidence, and practice expertise on social innovation in higher education institutions (HEIs), across academic and professional disciplines. The book includes a selected set of peer-reviewed chapters presenting different perspectives against which relevant actors can identify and analyse social innovation in HEIs. The volume demonstrates how HEIs can respond to societal challenges, support positive social change, and contribute to the development of international public policy discourse. It answers the question ‘how does the present higher education system, in different countries, promote social innovation and create social change and impact’. In answering this question, the book identifies factors driving success as well as obstacles. Furthermore, it examines how higher education innovation assists societal challenges and investigates the benefits of effective social innovation engagement by HEIs. The interdisciplinary approach of the volume makes it a must-read for scholars, students, policy-makers, and practitioners of economics, education, business and management, political science, and sociology interested in a better understanding of social innovation.
This book addresses the practice of social innovation, which is currently very much in the public eye. New ideas and approaches are needed to tackle the severe and wicked problems with which contemporary societies are struggling. Especially in times of economic crisis, social innovation is regarded as one of the crucial elements needed to move forward. Our knowledge of its dynamics has significantly progressed, thanks to an abundance of studies on social innovation both general and sector-specific. However, despite the valuable research conducted over the past years, the systematic analysis of social innovation is still contested and incomplete. The questions asked in the book will be the following: 1. What is the nature of social innovations? 2.What patterns can be identified in social innovations emerging at the local level? 3.How is the emergence and spread of social innovations related to urban governance? More precisely, which conditions and arrangements facilitate and hinders social innovation? We explore these questions using different types of data and methods, and studying different contexts. In particular, we focus on innovations that aim at solving problems of the young unemployed, single parents and migrants. This analysis is based on original research carried out in the period 2010-2013 in the framework of a European project with a specific empirical research strategy. Research was carried out in 20 cities in 10 different European countries.
The 21st century has brought a cornucopia of new knowledge and technologies. But there has been little progress in our ability to solve social problems using social innovation – the deliberate invention of new solutions to meet social needs - across the globe. Geoff Mulgan is a pioneer in the global field of social innovation. Building on his experience advising international governments, businesses and foundations, he explains how it provides answers to today’s global social, economic and sustainability issues. He argues for matching R&D in technology and science with a socially focused R&D and harnessing creative imagination on a larger scale than ever before. Weaving together history, ideas, policy and practice, he shows how social innovation is now coming of age, offering a comprehensive view of what can be done to solve the global social challenges we face.
As we grapple with how to respond to some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as inequality, poverty and climate change, there is growing global interest in ‘social innovation’ as a potential solution. But what exactly is ‘social innovation’? This book describes three ways to theorise social innovation when seeking to manage and organize for both social and economic progress.
Based on more than thirty case studies in eight different countries, this book explores the governance dynamics of local social innovations in the field of poverty reduction. The diverse team of contributors reflect on the trajectory of social innovation in European governance. They illustrate how different governance dynamics and welfare mixes enable or hinder poverty reduction strategies and analyse how they involve a diversity of actors, instruments and resources at different spatial scales. The contributions are based on research motivated by the standstill in the fight against poverty in Europe and the anxiety that conventional macro-social policies are insufficient to deal with the current challenges.
This book addresses ‘the economics of social innovation’, a widely neglected topic in regional development. The chapters in this edited volume cover distinct but complementary and related aspects concerning the existing gap between the hitherto unexploited potential of social innovation in relation to socio-economic challenges that regions across Europe and globally face. Research on social innovation has gained momentum over the last decade, spurred notably by the growing interest in social issues related to policy making, public management and entrepreneurship in response to the grand challenges societies in Europe and worldwide face. Accelerated by the normative turn in research and innovation policies towards ‘missions’, social innovation is nowadays a central element on policy agendas, from the urban and regional level to the national and subnational level of the European Commission and the OECD. However, for social innovations to unfold their full potential a better understanding of underlying mechanisms, processes and impacts is necessary. The first three chapters focus on framework conditions and characteristics of social innovation. The following two chapters emphasise the determinants of social innovation and translocal empowerment. In the last part, attention is devoted to social innovation in specific fields such as health care and greening society, and social innovations’ transformative potential. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, European Planning Studies.
'Social innovation’ can be simply defined as the new ideas and initiatives that make it possible to meet our society’s challenges in areas such as the environment, education, employment, culture, health and economic development. It is currently becoming increasingly important as a central concept for social theories and politics. This edited volume brings together interdisciplinary contributions which examine the complex interrelation between innovation and social problems, a link which has been surprisingly underexplored in academia and practice thus far. Social Innovation: New Forms of Organisation in Knowledge–Based Societies examines the mutual interdependence of innovation processes and social affairs. This interdependent relationship is characterised by a high degree of complexity which stems on the one hand from the true uncertain character of innovation and on the other hand from the different time scales in both domains. The alliance between innovation and social policy is highly relevant to the challenges which we are facing in the 21st century, such as resource scarcity, ageing societies and climate change. All of these issues demand substantial, continuous and sustainable structural change to maintain international competitiveness. Social change can only be understood by improving our knowledge about the impact of innovation processes in their co-evolutionary alliance with social evolution. The purpose of this book is to increase awareness of social participation among civil society organisations, SMEs, governments and research institutions, in order to promote economic, political and social changes that enhance collective welfare. This volume offers a key starting point for those looking to further explore this important realm of social research.
In a time where governments and civil society organizations are putting ever-greater stock in social innovation as a route to transformation, understanding what characterizes social innovation with transformative potential is important. Exciting and promising ideas seem to die out as often as they take flight, and market mechanisms, which go a long way towards contributing to successful technical innovations, play an insignificant role in social innovations. The cases in this book explore the evolution of successful social innovation through time, from the ideas which catalysed social and system entrepreneurs to create new processes, platforms, projects and programs to fundamental social shifts in culture, economics, laws and policies which occurred as a result. In doing so, the authors shed light on how to recognize transformative potential in the early stage innovations we see today.
