Social Innovation and the Capability Approach—Introduction to the Special Issue

Social Innovation

We are pleased to share with this special issue the first multi-authored discussion of social innovation and the capability approach. It includes eight research articles as well as three policy briefs. Considering that the capability approach has at least in part emerged as a critique of traditional conceptions and measurements of economic development, it is surprising that even innovation without the qualifier ‘social’ does not appear to feature prominently in research on the capability approach (but see Capriati 2013; Bajmócy and Gébert 2014; Hartmann 2014). Not only is innovation tout court widely considered an important driver of economic development, but its emphasis on entrepreneurs, innovative organizations, networks and clusters at first sight appears to fit well with the agency focus of the capability approach and the creating of capabilities (Nussbaum 2011). Whatever the reasons for this relative neglect of innovation, we trust that the social innovation might attract interest, and a more appropriate starting point for reflections on novelty and social change in the twentieth century.

So what is social innovation? This special issue has emerged from the experience and discussions we have had as partners of the EU-research project CrESSI that defines social innovation as

The development and delivery of new ideas and solutions (products, services, models, modes of provision, processes) at different socio-structural levels that intentionally seek to change power relations and improve human capabilities, as well as the processes via which these solutions are carried out. (Nicholls and Ziegler 2015)

A EU-research project as the context of this definition is not so surprising, once it is noted that the European Union has provided considerable funding for research projects within its Framework 7 and Horizon 2020 funding agencies (see the CrESSI homepage for a list of these projects). And yet, in spite of these funding efforts no generally agreed definition of social innovation has emerged. Rather, we see a range of uses, and considerable fluidity and diversity of meaning and interpretation across social innovation research and practice.

Still, a bibliometric analysis of the ‘coming to be’ of social innovation (Ayob, Teasdale, and Fagan 2016) suggests two contesting innovation streams of social innovation research. The first focused on outcomes and social value production; the second focused on changes in power relation and an emphasis on new social processes and relations aiming at rebalancing power disparities and economic inequalities in society. Recently, however, there appears to have been some de-contestation in the sense that scholars increasingly emphasize both aspects: the outcome and the process. The CrESSI definition with its focus on change in power relations and improved human capabilities is but one example of this (Moulaert et al. 2013).

Such apparent ‘de-contestation,’ however, does not licence the ‘a-politicizing’ of social innovation (Edmiston 2016). Rather, there is a danger that the fluidity and malleability of the concept conceal differences in values and conflicts of interests. For this reason, an approach such as the capability approach, which has not shied away from the analysis of ‘entangled’ facts and values (Putnam 2002) can shed light on evaluative aspects of social innovations, their presuppositions and consequences for policy, the design of interventions, and attempts at scaling and so forth (Ziegler 2015).

This task is all the more important if we note that one reason for the recent increase in interest in social innovation is a collapse in trust in the status quo, especially after the 2008–2009 global financial crisis. Where established approaches fail, space for the discussion of alternatives needs to be created, and the capability approach can play a role in this. As Frank Moulaert and his colleagues (2013, 2) noted:

Socially innovative actions, strategies, practices and processes arise whenever problems of poverty, exclusion, segregation and deprivation or opportunities for improving living conditions cannot find satisfactory solutions in the ‘institutionalized field’ of public or private action.

Such problems, no doubt, are not exclusive to the Europe. And while we want to acknowledge the ‘Euro’-origin of this special issue project for us as editors, we have sought to minimize any Eurocentric bias, though readers can judge for themselves how we have fared in that regard.

The first paper in this special issue by Von Jacobi, Edmiston, and Ziegler (2017) explores the possibility of tackling marginalization through social innovation, and on this basis criticizes a mismatch between EU social innovation policy documents and the polices actually carried out so far. Drawing from work on justice and disadvantage from a capability perspective, the paper develops a conception of marginalization and discusses strategies designed to overcome it. It argues that effective social innovation capable of tackling marginalization not only depends on the active participation of marginalized individuals, but also on addressing the institutional embeddedness of their disadvantage. It then uses this account of marginalization and social innovation for a survey of EU social innovation policy. It discovers bias towards prevailing institutional and cognitive ends—such as putting people into jobs—that belies the transformative potential of social innovation emphasized in EU policy documents. One way of dealing with this bias from a human development perspective, is to include marginalized groups in the policy design and implementation processes, thereby incorporating from the outset the ‘doings’ and ‘beings’ they value. As we will see, subsequent papers in this special issue make a variety of suggestions how the goal of such a bottom-up, emancipatory process could be advanced.

Prior to this, a second paper by Howaldt and Schwarz (2017), Social innovation and human development—how the capabilities approach and social innovation theory mutually support each other, suggests that some more theoretical ground work is needed, not least so as to prevent the capture of social innovation in conventional, narrow conceptions of innovation and the economy. For this, recourse to the sociology of Gabriel Tarde and his analysis of social change is helpful.

The real causes of change consist of a chain of certainly very numerous ideas, which however are different and discontinuous, yet they are connected together by even far more numerous acts of imitation, for which they serve as a model (Tarde cited in Howaldt and Schwartz’s article).

Such a sociological grounding leads to a focus on practices and the change of social practices at the core of social innovation. If such change is to be intentional and effective in an ethically ‘good’ way, which social innovation discourse tends to assume, linking practice theory with the evaluative language of the capability approach can stimulate a more reflective use of social innovation, and its consequences for different people, as well as for problems where it is needed most.

In her exploration of the role of the capability approach in social innovation, Tiwari (2017) reminds us that in spite of the current hype, social innovation is nothing new. In particular, the emergence of the co-operative movement in the nineteenth century around social visionaries such as Robert Owen initiated early on one of the most important social innovations. The example of Owen as an individual experimenting in New Lanark in 1799 with an improved, economic and co-operative process is well chosen, as Tiwari argues that it is the aspirations of people that are crucially important. If there is a space for individual and group articulation of aspirations, this creates the space for social innovations that in turn serve as conversion factors for people to expand their real freedoms. She further discusses this thesis with three examples: self-help groups, M-Pesa and the Indian Freedom Movement under Gandhi.

Following these three papers on the capability approach and social innovation in relation to theories of injustice and disadvantage, practice theory and the analytic tool box of the capability approach, the next set of papers turn to a challenge that clearly emerges from these papers in spite of their quite different conceptual starting points: how to take the perception and values of people as agents seriously in social change process? How to liberate the creative and emancipatory potential of an innovation process that is not only outcome-focused? The first response to this challenge is offered by Solava Ibrahim (2017) in her paper on Building Collective Capabilities: The 3C-Model for Grassroots-led Development. She notes that the poor need to engage in acts of collective agency to generate new collective capabilities that each individual alone would not be able to achieve. But is there any systematic way to initiate, support and sustain such as process? Ibrahim suggests the 3C: (1) Conscientization; (2) Conciliation and (3) Collaboration. Conscientization, defined by her as a process that encourages citizens to think critically about their realities and nurture their ‘capacity to aspire’ for better lives. This C incorporates the thesis observed earlier in relation to Owen, as well as ex negativo in relation to the failure of EU policy practice to take the ends of people rather than of prevailing institutions as a starting point. The next two Cs focus on the dynamic between individuals, groups and institutions: conciliation seeks to blend individual and collective interest so as to create a common vision; collaboration refers to working with the state, civil societies and donors so as to challenge power relations effectively. The paper concludes with three Ss—success, sustainability and scalability—and the importance of individual behavioural change, collective agency and institutional reform.

The second response to the challenge comes from Matthews (2017). In his paper Understanding Indigenous Innovation in Rural West Africa: Challenges to Diffusion of Innovations Theory and Current Social Innovation Practice, Matthews notes that even with a switch to social innovation, a modernist approach to innovation diffusion frequently prevails. An example is the idea of technology transfer, externally devised inventions diffused by local innovators. This approach is not only problematic, Matthew argues, it also overlooks a genuine source of creative responses: innovation processes originating in marginalized communities themselves. Drawing on a case study of rural farming in West Africa, he makes the case for a discovery-based model of innovation within indigenous communities, and questions the prevailing focus on scaling up.

In a third response, Mazigo (2017) turns to action research. His paper, Enhancing social innovation through action research: evidence from an empirical study in the fishing sector of Ukerewe District, Tanzania, presents a series of group meetings he organized with stakeholders in the fishing sector. They were designed to provide the participants with opportunities to reflect on individual and collective challenges, and to propose and discussed novel ideas, strategies, services and products. We would like to highlight specifically his findings on ideas and how the fisherfolk where able to change their framing: from poor actors to ‘constrained wealth creators.’ This change in perception of social status is no doubt an important aspect in regard to the aspirations concerning individual and collective capacities. Accordingly, this contribution adds the role of action research for social innovation and the capability approach.

The next paper by Pellicer-Sifres et al. (2017) contributes grassroots innovation to the discussion of social innovation and the capability approach. Grassroots innovation here refers to networks of activists and organizations generating bottom-up solutions for sustainable development, that is, the innovations originate from and primarily operate in civil society rather than in business. In their paper, Grassroots Social Innovation for Human Development: An Analysis of Alternative Food Networks in the City of Valencia (Spain), the authors discuss such innovations in relation to agency, purposes, drivers and processes and their specification in terms of the capability approach. On this basis, they propose a novel framework—Grassroots Social Innovation for Human Development—for improved understanding of bottom-up, transformative social innovation processes.

In the final paper, Information technology, innovation and human development: hospital information systems in an Indian state, Sahay and Walsham (2017), turn to a mega-trend in innovation: information and communication technologies (ICT). They ask how innovations based on ICT can contribute to human development. For this, they note that ICT itself involves technological, social and institutional innovation and then explore how these innovations can contribute to human development. On this basis, they study the development and use of a hospital information system in Himachal Pradesh, India. They identify three processes of relevance for human development: strengthening processes to include the disadvantaged, empowering the patient and making communal voices count. Their framework has wider applicability for the analysis of ICT-based innovations and human development.

In conclusion, this special issue, while based on independently written contributions and notwithstanding the diversity of cases and insights, still suggests a shared story. To overcome marginalization, exclusion and poverty in any meaningful way it is necessary to include the marginalized in projects, programmes and policies by devising them with rather than about or for them. If this is to be effective, the challenge is to liberate reflection and imagination from narrowly economic and political perspectives and from cognitive and institutional pressures to ‘fit’ people into prevailing structures with the attendant risk of merely reproducing ways of doing and being. To this end, in their different ways the contributions in this special issue suggest that there is a need to pay attention to perspectives and voices from indigenous groups, civil society groups and the working poor: both as individuals reflecting on their needs and aspirations, and as members of groups and social networks. As such reflection processes, group formation, and insertion in institutional change cannot be taken for granted, not least as there are countervailing pressures for more rapid, disruptive change that shortcuts such potentially slow and at any rate multi-voice, co-determined processes, the role and responsibility of scientists is a tacit background theme throughout these papers. Taking a step back, social innovation research emerges as one way to complement the long-standing tradition of capability research on manifest injustice and basic justice and with it, to use a Rawlsian term, the most disadvantaged groups in society (Rawls 1999; Nussbaum 2006; Sen 2009). It complements the search for improved principles and accounts of justice and equality with a bottom-up actor-perspective. Given the malleability of the concept of social innovation, and the difference between rhetoric and practice it permits, as an also evaluative perspective the capability approach can critically accompany social innovation discourse so as to help it stay ‘on track,’ and remain focused on urgent issues within a global perspective.

It is therefore fitting that, in addition to the research papers just outlined, this special issue also includes three policy briefs: one on creating economic space for social innovation by proposing a series of policy considerations from the CrESSI research project on social innovation for human development (Ziegler et al. 2017); another, drawing on the research project EFESEIIS, on enabling ecosystems for social enterprises and social innovation (Biggeri, Testi, and Bellucci 2017); and a third on social innovation in Latin America (Domanski, Howaldt, and Schröder 2017) based on research carried out in the project SI-Drive.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the Authors

Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti is Full professor of Economics at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Pavia. For the term 20014-2018 she is appointed as an Extraordinary Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of Free State, South Africa. She acts as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities and she has been Vice-President of the Human Development and Capability Association for the terms 2004-2008 and 2010-2011. Her main research interests are in the field of poverty and income inequality measurement; multidimensional approaches to poverty and well-being, capability and human development approach; fuzzy sets theory and fuzzy logic for well-being analysis; gender inequality, unpaid work and female empowerment.

Christopher Houghton Budd is an English economic and monetary historian. Prior to entering into academia, he initiated or participated in a variety of small, mostly ‘green,’ businesses in fields as varied as farming, housing, food distribution, retailing, investment and school governance. Alongside he worked free-lance as a writer and publisher, giving workshops in many parts of the world. He has a particular interest in associative economics, an approach to economics that combines financial discipline with active social responsibility on the part of human beings. He has a degree in Economic History from the University of Sussex, where he focussed on the Bank of England, and a PhD in Banking from Cass Business School, London, where his thesis was on the changing relationship between central banking and the financial markets since 1973. In recent years his focus has turned to ‘youth bonds,’ the need to capitalise young people in ways that encourage them to take their own lives in hand. As well as lay books (see christopherhoughtonbudd.com/writings), he has published two academic texts: Auditorial Central Banking (2005) and Finance at the Threshold—rethinking the real and financial economies (2011). He is currently working on the economic regeneration of Folkestone, England.

Rafael Ziegler is head of research of GETIDOS at the University of Greifswald. His main research areas are political philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy of science. GETIDOS conducts research on sustainable solutions and offers education on these topics. With the GETIDOS team, Rafael published ‘Social entrepreneurship in the water sector—getting things done sustainably’ (Cheltenham 2014), and co-initiated the ‘big jump challenge—European youth campaign for water protection’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission: Project “CrESSI - Creating Economic Space for Social Innovation” [grant number 613261].