Empirical Approaches to Social Innovation

Abstract

This chapter describes two empirical approaches with which social innovation and its potentially transformative role can be studied. Both are oriented towards the Extended Social Grid Model (ESGM) and strive to bring its abstract categories on the ground and facilitate empirical analyses; first an analysis of long-term comprehensive case studies; and second a mixed-method approach inspired by the capability approach for evaluating the impact of social innovations. Both approaches enter new ground in social innovation research and supply valuable insights into the nature of social innovation and how it can be examined. The historical approach reveals the complexities of social innovation trajectories; the agency oriented approach of the more quantitative study opens new paths for a measurement of social innovation impacts that can be applied in many situations.

Creating social value by empowering people: a social innovation perspective

“…In such an indefinite longer frame, broader structural effects of social innovation may materialize or not, in line with the risk of “capture”, according to which “social innovations are more likely to adapt to, and be shaped by than disrupt their institutional environments” (Sinclair et al., 2018, p. 12). While social innovations may be laying seeds for subsequent social change, only long‐term perspectives are likely to assess their overall impact on the socio‐institutional context properly (Mildenberger et al., 2019; Westley & McGowan, 2017).…”