Ways of supporting social innovation
Creating the conditions for social innovation
Traditionally, the market has been seen as the primary source of innovation. This is because it has the structures, mechanisms and incentives that drive innovation. In Joseph Schumpeter’s formulation, it has the power of ‘creative destruction’, destroying the old in order to open the way for the new. Neither the state nor the third sector has the structure or incentive to innovate in this way. It is argued that they lack the mechanisms that allow the best to flourish and the less effective to wither away. The household on the other hand – that most distributed of economic systems – generates ideas but on its own lacks the capital, surplus time and organisational capacity to develop them.
In this section, we look at the incentives, structures and conditions that could enable social innovation to flourish. We look at each of the four sectors in turn.
In the public sector
There are many structural features of government that inhibit risk taking and innovation. There are barriers and few enabling conditions such as the dedicated budgets, teams, and processes found in business or science. These conditions too often squeeze out new ideas and impose standardised solutions rather than allowing many flowers to bloom. However, the result hasn't necessarily been a lack of innovation in government.
