Controversies in social innovation research

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to make a critical and theoretical review of the concept of social innovation by analysing the unresolved controversies that have accompanied its success. Social Innovation has become a fashionable concept, described as an accessible resource for organisations or governments to solve social problems and used as an antidote to resort to in any kind of situation. In these cases, social innovation becomes rhetoric void of content, working as container concept, and reducing its theoretical, empirical, and analytical possibilities and practical proposals. This article stresses the need to rescue the concept for scientific purposes, by establishing a direct linkage between social innovation studies and the main problems and challenges of social research, with a particular emphasis on the methodological and analytical approaches provided by social theory and the need for an empirical verification of everything social innovation claims to be and provide.

Keywords:

• Social innovation
• social change
• social research
• social theory

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ander Gurrutxaga Abad

Ander Gurrutxaga Abad is a Professor of Sociology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) since 1994. He has been Head Researcher in the Excellence Group on INNOLAB/BERRILAB: Innovation, Social Change and Complexity, until 2019.

Amongst the books he has written are the following: El código nacionalista vasco durante el franquismo (1985); La Refundación del nacionalismo vasco (1990); a transformación del nacionalismo (1996); Las paradojas sociológicas (1996); La mirada difusa (2002); El presente del estado-nación (2004); La producción de la idea del nosotros (2005); Spanish and Latin American Transitions to Democracy (2005); El malestar en la democracia (2005); Occidente y las otras modernidades (2007); Recorridos por el cambio, la innovación y la incertidumbre (2010); La luz de la luciérnaga. Diálogos sobre innovación social con Javier Echeverria (2012); Implications of Current Research on Social Innovation in the Basque Country (ed.) (2012); Societies and Social Innovation (2013); Voces y argumentos de la innovación social (2013); Fábricas del futuro, with Auxkin Galarraga (2017); Rutas nacionalistas (2017), and Industrias que piensan and Mapas del cambio (2018), also with Auxkin Galarraga.

He has been the lead researcher on 28 national and international research projects. As a guest lecturer he has delivered courses, seminars and conferences in foreign and Spanish universities including the University of California – San Diego, Tel Aviv University, Santo Domingo National University, the University of Cuzco, the University of Veracruz in Mexico, Duke University, the Complutense University of Madrid, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the University of Granada and the Public University of Navarre. He has directed and/or continues to direct more than 20 doctoral theses.

Auxkin Galarraga Ezponda

Auxkin Galarraga Ezponda, PhD in Sociology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) (2011/04/08). He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at the University of the Basque Country and Vice-Dean in the Faculty of Law at the University of the Basque Country. He has been a member of ‘INNOLAB/BERRILAB: Innovation, Social Change and Complexity’ research group of the Basque University System until 2019. During the last years, he has participated in several regional and national research projects about social innovation, social and structural change and emerging industrial and socio-professional environments such as the cultural and creative industries or sports industry. As results of those research projects, he has published several papers, book chapters and complete books and has participated in many conferences and congresses at regional, national and international level. He has also been visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego (U.S).