Complexity-informed interpretation of social innovation

IMPACT

Complexity concepts help to open the black box of social innovation for public sector managers and policy-makers and to understand why social innovation can simultaneously be both a solution and problem. Complexity thinking guides formulating essential questions and helps to imagine the desired future and, in so doing, it also provides heuristic tools to address the paradox of social innovation.

ABSTRACT

Social innovation is a systemic and complex process aiming at achieving added value for the whole society. This article explores the applicability of complexity thinking as a useful resource for conceptualizing social innovation. The author advances the complexity-informed research tradition by emphasizing the emergence of social innovation and addressing the paradox of being in charge but not in control. By drawing on such concepts as emergence, self-organization, diversity, co-evolution, feedback processes, dissipative structures and attractors, the article proposes a new approach to cope with the complexities of social innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• Complexity thinking
• emergence
• social innovation
• wicked game
• wicked problems

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).