View article

The field of social innovation has grown up primarily as a field of practice, made up of people doing things and then, sometimes, reflecting on what they do. There has been relatively little attention to theory, or to history, and although there has been much promising research work in recent years, there are no clearly defined schools of thought, no continuing theoretical arguments, and few major research programmes to test theories against the evidence.

But to mature as a field, social innovation needs to shore up its theoretical foundations, the frames with which it thinks and makes sense of the world. Sharper theory will help to clarify what is and is not known, the points of argument as well as agreement. It will help in the generation of testable hypotheses and in guiding answers to questions: How much is social change driven by entrepreneurial individuals, by movements, teams or networks, or for that matter by …