“Why can’t this work here?”: social innovation and collective impact in a micropolitan community

Abstract

Cross-sector partnerships, and collective impact, in particular, have gained increased attention as community-level strategies for tackling wicked, complex, social challenges such as child maltreatment. To date, there has been limited independent research on collective impact, especially in non-metropolitan areas with limited capacity. This case study examines the conditions that supported the development of a collective impact effort in a non-metropolitan community to address child wellbeing. It finds that small communities offer strengths that support collective impact as a social innovation as well as challenges that create vulnerabilities to outside influence that may stymie the development of locally developed social innovations.

Institutionalizing Experimental Places for Inclusive Social Innovation: From Utopias to Heterotopias

“…Thus, designing, institutionalizing, and connecting experimental places for inclusive social innovation with publics and relevant stakeholders becomes a practice aimed at understanding social innovation from a democratic learning and civic capabilities development point of view (Sancino, 2016), rather from the perspective of profitization through market logics. This perspective questions also the idea of ''scaling up'' as superior form of social innovation as opposed to ''scaling out'' (see on this for example Westley et al 2014, p. 236 andZuckerman, 2020), where scaling-in any of its forms-should be assessed against a ''philosophy of evolutionary learning''(e.g. Ansell, 2011)'.…”