Research & Publications - Understanding Social Innovation
Frances Westley, Nino Antadze, Darcy J. Riddell, Kirsten Robinson, & Sean Geobey
2011-04
Abstract:
Social entrepreneurs and non-for-profit organizations often attempt not only to make a difference on the local level, but also to challenge and possibly alter the overall system that creates the social problems. The pathways for system change that social entrepreneurs adopt are different and depend on the initial conditions, opportunities and barriers, as well as the motivation behind the decision to scale up. The article explores different pathways that social entrepreneurs pursue by...
Stephen Huddart
2010-12
Summary:
Examining how social innovation opens up new approaches to addressing complex problems, this article looks at some of the complex issues and related social innovation, including demographic problems; technology-enabled social innovation and how it has restructured work and expanded human intelligence; how conflict has been reframed as collaboration; and new types of volunteering. The article concludes with a review of some of the new social innovation tools and processes.
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Nino Antadze & Frances Westley
2010-09
This article takes issue with the most dominant approach to interpreting how and why social inventions go to scale – the analysis of social innovation diffusion and impact as an aspect of market growth. This “supply-demand” approach is most clearly represented in the work of the Young Foundation in England, a group of scholars and researchers who have done a tremendous amount of documentation and research on social innovation. Market growth is the reflection of an increase in both demand and...
Frances Westley
2010-05
In this video, Frances Westley gives a presentation at the SiG Social Innovation Lab in Toronto. Her presentation, entitled Scaling Out for Scaling Up: Pathways for System Change, showcases a typology of community sector organizations and offers insight about their methodologies for scaling up.
Michele-Lee Moore, Frances Westley, Ola Tjornbo, Carin Holroyd
2010-01
Abstract
Social innovation is an important component of being resilient – new ideas will keep a society adaptable, flexible and learning. Therefore, the better the understanding of the conditions that enable innovations not only to emerge, but to take hold, become routinized within our broader social structures, and then to face disruption or disturbance, the greater the capacity humans will have to be resilient. One of these conditions provides space for the role of the state and public policy...
Frances Westley & Nino Antadze
2009-03
This paper explores the strategies and dynamics of scaling up of social innovations for greater social impact. Included is a definition of social innovation and its relationship to complex environments and systems, as well as an exploration of the related concepts of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship. The model of scaling up as simply requiring ‘more’ (or the market model), is questioned and deemed unreliable in understanding the complex nature of social innovation. Rather, readers...
Paul Born
2009-03
Frances Westley
2009-03
Dan McCarthy
2009-01
From Getting to Maybe, Frances Westley
