Social Innovation and Human Development—How the Capabilities Approach and Social Innovation Theory Mutually Support Each Other

Abstract

In light of the growing importance of social innovations in addressing the big social challenges, this article examines the need to develop a concept of social innovation as an analytical category. As such, social innovation is grounded in social theory, which looks at its various manifestations, actors and cultural contexts as well as its interrelationship with processes of social change. With recourse to social practice theories and the social theory of Gabriel Tarde, social innovations are analyzed as an intentional new figuration of social practices and as a generative mechanism of social change. Based on the outlined social-theoretical foundation of social innovations, the various interactions between social practices, social innovations and concepts of human development are discussed.

Keywords:

• Social innovation
• Social practices
• Social change
• Social theory
• Human development
• Capability approach

About the Authors

Prof. Dr Jürgen Howaldt is director of Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund, TU Dortmund University and professor at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences. He is an internationally renowned expert in the field of social innovation. He has consulted German as well as European policy-makers and has also presented his concept of social innovation in all parts of the world. In 2011, he was one of the organizers of the international conference “Challenge Social Innovation” in Vienna. He is Affiliate of SIERC (Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre, Massey University, New Zealand); Co-founder of the European School of Social Innovation; Expert of the German Federal Chancellor’s Dialog for the Future and Scientific Coordinator of the global research project SI-DRIVE.

Dr Michael Schwarz freelancer with office in Cologne, Germany, is a sociologist, working from 2005 to 2012 as senior researcher and project manager at Sozialforschungsstelle Dortmund in the research fields of organizations, networks, innovation and climate change with special interests in pathways to sustainable development. In this time he has given important impulses for the development of social innovations as a research subject and analytic category. He has written numerous books and articles on this issue. Since 2012 he works as freelance and in narrow cooperation with Jürgen Howaldt on this subject. His main focus lies now on the social-theoretical foundation of social innovation as driving force of transformative social change and on suitable consultation and support of running research projects.

Notes

1. In addition, the critical literature review that was conducted as part of the SI-Drive project emphasizes: “There is a strong consensus that social innovation approaches are imperative for finding solutions to the interconnected challenges of global and sustainable development” (Millard 2014, 35).

2. Here, we look back to the initial results of the global research project SI-Drive (e.g. Howaldt et al. 2014).

3. www.si-drive.eu.

4. Social innovations are defined “as new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs and create new social relationships or collaborations. In other words, they are innovations that are both good for society and enhance society’s capacity to act” (Murray, Caulier-Grice, and Mulgan 2010, 3; also Bureau of European Policy Adviser 2010).

5. The term relates to the Schumpeterian definition of innovation as a new combination of production factors.

6. A database with more than 1000 cases has been created, covering about 80 countries from all world continents and addressing 7 policy fields (education, employment, environment, mobility and transport, health and social care, and poverty and sustainable development). The findings presented above are preliminary results, a detailed analysis is ongoing.

7. In this regard we refer to the concept of capabilities as Ziegler suggested (2010, 261):

 A simple example shows the advance over the focus on resources: given the same income (i.e., a resource), a person prone to illness may not effectively have the same opportunities as the able-bodied person. If income is spent largely on health expenditures, then the capacity to take part in the life of the community may be significantly reduced. Because people adapt to their circumstances, the capability focus also is an advance over the utilitarian focus on happiness. Children in miserable social conditions may still be subjectively happy, and yet to say that they are treated as equals by the society creating or allowing such conditions is counterintuitive. The capability approach focuses on the space in between resources and utilities (Cohen 1993) and is, as a result, sensitive to the utilitarian focus on consequences via the focus on functionings. (Ziegler 2010, 261)