Social entrepreneurship and the development of effective social policy are two approaches to social innovation and problem-solving. However, surprisingly little is known either theoretically or practically about social innovation processes and the practices that support knowledge transfer from the social, behavioral and economic sciences into social policy and new venture creation. This workshop will explore the intersection of the SBE sciences, social policy and entrepreneurship with the goal of developing a research agenda, collaborative arrangements and curricula to build bridges between knowledge-creators and practitioners in these areas.
An Agenda for Research and Practice The Social Innovation Process: Transfer – Translate - Transform One of the major insights from the workshop comes from the session by innovation scholar Deborah Dougherty. Social innovation is not just one process. There are at least three processes for moving knowledge derived from research and academia into practice (a key feature of social innovation): transfer, translate, and transform. Transfer describes moving knowledge, ideas, and inventions across boundaries that share a common language and perhaps regularly share knowledge with one another. An example of this type of knowledge transfer occurs when professional schools in academic institutions host conferences or workshops for practitioners. Often innovation can move from academia to practitioners in this context. Translate describes moving this knowledge across semantic boundaries that require interpretation of this knowledge along the way. In this process, the actors have to negotiate the meaning of words and objects and develop a shared understanding of these words and objects. An example of this would be the implementation of various youth development techniques by the staff of Café Reconcile, an innovative restaurant, job training and youth development initiative in New Orleans. Representatives from Café Reconcile described their innovative work and the measurable outcomes that resulted. Transform describes moving knowledge across pragmatic or policy boundaries and actors negotiate around their interests to find common ground and useful knowledge. This is clearly the most challenging of the three processes and requires the highest level of skill. Transformation means that members of one community come to understand how knowledge from another community fits into the context of their own work, enriching what they know. Several scholars have acknowledged the challenge of transforming knowledge from SBE into social and policy entrepreneurship but there is little known about how and under what conditions these transformations take place. An example of this process leading to a positive outcome is the NYC Social Impact Bond we highlighted in Session #1 of the workshop. By working across sectors, institutions, and organizations and negotiating around their varied interests an innovative experiment has been forged to address recidivism rates in NYC. Since innovation can be the result of any of these processes it is also important to understand how the process unfolds and under what conditions it emerges. Two of our working groups expanded on this theme of understanding the process of social innovation. Working Group #5 – The Role of University in Promoting Social Innovation proposed a study of what universities are doing in this regard. Working Group #4 – Researching Social Innovation Incubators – proposed a study of what is working across the country in supporting social innovation in incubators and co-working spaces. Facilitating and Incentivizing Social Innovation A second insight derived from the working group discussions is that progress in the area of social innovation can be made if we can facilitate bridging activities across sectors and if we can incentivize people, organizations and institutions to collaborate to address social problems. This is a very important activity for the so called "wicked" problems that challenge society. Facilitating these activities in classrooms, training institutes and other practice-based activities would lead to more creative solutions to social problems. In Session #2 of the workshop, Drs. Kickul and Lyons noted the significant challenge in providing useful training/courses across disciplines but when these efforts are successful the outcomes can be creative and innovative. It is also important to facilitate the interactions between the "inventors" of useful ideas, theories, and insights with the "innovators" that can apply this knowledge in the communities. Working group #2 - Hub for Increasing Community Engagement with Social Innovation Enterprise proposed a model for facilitating more interactions between knowledge "inventors" and community innovators. This requires more deliberate efforts to bring academics together with practitioners around the most challenging social problems of the day. Working Group #3: Replicate and Scale the NJ Social Innovation Institute at Other Universities uses a successful model of facilitating social innovation that comes from community organizations and local innovators. It was evident from our participants that facilitating these types of interactions across sectors, disciplines and communities requires human and financial resources and for that reason they continue to be relatively rare activities outside of higher education. Incentivizing these types of activities beyond academic institutions is important insight coming from our workshop. We recognize the important role of academic institutions but also acknowledge that opportunities to facilitating and incentivizing the activities that can lead to social innovation must be expanded beyond academia. Our workshop participants proposed using grant or seed funding competitions, social innovation funds, and encouraging social impact investing. One of our working groups proposed Crowd-Sourced Funding for Social Innovation (Working Group #1) as a method of supporting and incentivizing social innovation. For our recommendations, please review the final report for the award.
