UK Network Inaugural Forum Birmingham 1st October 2014

Increasing Social Innovation Capacity

Louise Pulford, Director, Social Innovation Exchange ( SIX)

The Social Innovation Exchange ( SIX)

• Know who is doing what already

• Understand how it works

• And have the capacity and skills to do it yourself

SIX connects people around the world to:

Building a ‘field’ of social innovation

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• Connect a worldwide network of more than 6000 innovators across 6 continents

• Curate of relevant and up to date thinking and practice of social innovation

• Work with governments including across EU, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Colombia• Web-based innovation exchange of knowledge and action, funded by EU

• Convene face-to-face meetings for social innovators

Five broad uses of the term social innovation

1. Social change and transformation2. Social cohesion and empowerment3. Social enterprise and social entrepreneurship4. Business strategy and organisational management5. New products, services and programmes

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• Process/methods (e.g. user led design, prototyping)• Networks and spaces (e.g. SIX/Hubs/labs/ incubators)• Impact investors/social investment (e.g. Big Society Capital, Bridges

Ventures)• Business CSR (e.g. Shared Value)• Social enterprise (e.g. Dialogue in the Dark, Working Rite, Fair Trade)• Social economy (e.g. Spice, Mondragon, The Co-op)• Philanthropy (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Omidyar Network)• Digital social innovation (e.g. Sharing Economy)• Informal networks (e.g. Transition Towns, Slow Food, Barefoot network)• Policymakers (e.g. EU, national levels)

Who does social innovation?

Global Social Innovation Mapping the field

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Schools of Thought/Research Traditions for

Public and social innovation

Non-profit management (e.g. Stanford Social Innovation Review)Third sector studies (e.g. TSRC)Social economy (e.g. EMES)Social entrepreneurship (e.g. INSEAD and CASE at Duke) Socio-technical systems/transitions (e.g. SPRU)Public administration (e.g. Harvard Kennedy School of Government)Design studies (e.g. DESIS)Resilience studies (e.g. Waterloo Institute)

Global Social Innovation Mapping the field

An ocean of social innovations

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CrowdsourcingRadical transparency

CSR to develop BoP products

Wikipedia

Harlem Children’s ZoneKhan Academy

Charter schoolsAcademies

Innovation in Social services

Innovation done Socially

Innovation in how we Socialize

TACSI Family by FamilyEscuela Nueva

Hammarby Sjöstad eco-town

FacebookTexting/IM etc

Avaaz

Move On

All Out

38 Degrees

Online learning platforms

Kiva Participatory Budgets

Facial recognition

North Karelia Health

Kaboom

TwitterWeb chatMySpace

Skype

Mothers to Mothers

Tyze

Lonely Planet

Magazines sold by the homelessCooperatives

SIX observations on social innovation

• Its not easy

• It doesn’t have to be new, just better – combination and synthesis are key

• Everyone is doing it

• It is does not sit in one sector

• We cant do it alone – Co, co, co

• The how is important

The ‘how’ it works is important

"nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere. The challenge of the 21st century is to find out what works and scale it up.“

President Clinton

Building capacity - but what kind?

• Tools including:

• Prototyping – storyboarding, role playing• Social business modeling• Ideation

• Capabilities including:

• Influencing/Mobilising • Curation/bricolage• Analysis / synthesis • Impact /Theory of change

• Mindsets including:

• Accepting and learning from failure• Managing risk• Thinking differently

Capacity across all sectors of society• Those who are doing it

• Young people

• Innovators themselves

• Communities

• Cities and local administrations

• Those trying to understand it

• Researchers/academics

• Measurers/evaluators

• Those who are supporting and incentivizing it

• Funders

• Infrastructures – incubators etc

• Governments

More institutions ( inside and outside of government) to support it

More tools and techniques to help people do it

Thinking differently isn’t easy

- We need to create new ways to measure what is working and what is not

- We need quicker cycles of learning and feedback

- We need new approaches to risk

- We need different legal structures, insurance schemes, policies..

- We need to be more honest about what doesn’t work

- We need to share our learning more effectively

- We need to move from being individuals to being a collective

Why does SIX exist?

Thank you

Stay in touch!

Louise@socialinnovationexchange.org