The document discusses social innovation and proposes that it is a complex process involving changes in social systems. Successful social innovations have impact and scale due to the work of institutional entrepreneurs who create the conditions for innovations to spread across scales by changing institutions and mobilizing networks. Different skills are needed at various phases of social innovation, including building coalitions, managing conflict, and bridging perspectives, to achieve broader impact.

1. A Framework for Social
Innovation!
Frances Westley
SiG@Waterloo
University of Waterloo
November, 2008

2. What is social innovation?. !
Social innovation is an initiative, product or
process which profoundly changes the basic
routines, resource and authority flows or
beliefs of any social system. Successful
social innovations are therefore disruptive
and have durability, impact and scale.
The role of:
Social Innovation Generation (SiG)
SiG@Waterloo

3. Key messages!
 Social innovation is complex: understanding the
difference between complicated and complex is
important in understanding the dynamics of social
innovation
 Market/diffusion models of social innovation should
be complimented by complex system models which
see change as discontinuous and focus on cross
scale dynamics.
 Agency and opportunity are both important.
 Agency is defined not only by social entrepreneurship but
by institutional entrepreneurship
 Institutional entrepreneurs tailor strategies to particular
opportunity contexts.

4. Innovations abound….
Eva’s Phoenix
Santropol
Roulant
The
Working
Center

5. How do innovations achieve a broader
impact?A marketing strategy for
“routine” change!
Structured, open
source methods
- sometimes
with payment,
consultation or
Hi control technical Lo control:
-innovation assistance
Innovation
contained
spreads
in the
Federations or like weeds-
Licensing and
control thru advocacy,
organizatio franchising -
professional persuasion
n-spread by quality
networks - helped and a
growth or assurance and
by evaluation sense of
clonign training
mvt.
modified from Nesta
(www.nesta.uk)

7. Simple Complicated Complex
Following a Recipe A Rocket to the Moon Raising a Child!

8. Simple
Following a
Recipe!
z The recipe is essential
z Recipes are tested to
assure replicability of
later efforts
z No particular
expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success
z Recipe notes the
quantity and nature of
“parts” needed
z Recipes produce
standard products
z Certainty of same
results every time

9. Simple Complicated
Following a Recipe A Rocket to the Moon !
 Formulae are critical
z The recipe is essential and necessary
z Recipes are tested to  Sending one rocket
assure replicability of increases assurance
later efforts that next will be ok
z No particular expertise;
knowing how to cook  High level of
increases success expertise in many
specialized fields +
z Recipes produce coordination
standard products
 Separate into parts
z Certainty of same and then coordinate
results every time  Rockets similar in
critical ways
 High degree of
certainty of outcome

10. Simple Complicated Complex
Following a Recipe A Rocket to the Moon Raising a Child
!
z The recipe is essential  Formulae have only a
limited application
z Recipes are tested to  Formulae are critical
assure replicability of and necessary  Raising one child
later efforts gives no assurance of
 Sending one rocket success with the next
z No particular expertise; increases assurance
knowing how to cook that next will be ok
increases success  Expertise can help
but is not sufficient;
z Recipes produce relationships are
standard products  High level of
expertise in many key
z Certainty of same specialized fields +  Can’t separate parts
results every time coordination from the whole
 Rockets similar in  Every child is unique
critical ways
 Uncertainty of
 High degree of outcome remains
certainty of outcome

11. Simple Complicated Complex
Following a Recipe A Rocket to the Moon Raising a Child!
z The recipe is essential  Formulae are critical  Formulae have only a
and necessary limited application
z Recipes are tested to
assure replicability of  Sending one rocket  Raising one child gives
later efforts increases assurance no assurance of success
that next will be ok with the next
z No particular expertise;
knowing how to cook
increases success  High level of expertise  Expertise can help but is
in many specialized not sufficient;
z Recipe notes the fields + coordination relationships are
quantity and nature of key
“parts” needed  Separate into parts and
then coordinate
 Can’t separate parts
z Recipes produce from the whole
 Rockets similar in
standard products critical ways
 Every child is unique
 High degree of  Uncertainty of outcome
certainty of outcome
z Certainty of same remains
results every time

12.  Complicated – “complicare”-
folded
 Verb - to fold
 Complex – “complexus” – woven
 Verb – to embrace or
comprehend a pattern

14. The idea is developed An “established” innovation
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Stored
Released
Variety Sameness
The idea is launched as a product,
process or organization An idea is born

15. A model for complex and
discontinuous change: cross scale
interactions!

16. Political system
Economic
system Cultural Social Innovation
system Legal
system
Institutional
Interorganizational/
intersectoral entrepreneurs
system + actor nets
Social entrepreneur
Local/organizational
system

17. What is an institution!
 “A patterned set of behaviors and meanings
which structure social behavior over time”
 Embedded in our language and our
understandings
 Embedded in our rules for social behavior;
including in our laws.
 Embedded in our economy, including resource
distribution

18. What is the role of the
institutional entrepreneur!
 To change the ideas, discourse, knowledge, social
interactions, resource expenditures, and policies/laws
which support environmental destruction to a new
pattern which supports a particular innovation.
 To work across scales and boundaries and with
multiple agents (agent net) in the “institutional field”

19. Institutional entrepreneurs tune
strategies of resource mobilization
to different opportunity contexts of
social innovation :!

22. Designing strategies for cross scale
impact when change opportunity is
opaque : “ up-down strategies” !
 Innovation occurs in the community in the context of organizations/
coalitions addressing specific issues - where problems are solved in
real time
 Social innovators/institutional entrepreneurs key role is to:
 question the strategic context/directions of decision makers in all sectors
at the community level and beyond.
 frame (explain) the context for community
 identify key innovations at the community level (those most pertinent to
the strategies)
 sell these to the key strategic decision makers (finding the right moment
to introduce the key innovation)

23. Senate
commission: Political Legal
report and Committees
media
attention National
PR communications
“First strategy -tell the
Identification story
of response”
system strategy
pathologies Institutional entrepreneurs+ actor net
and
promising
innovations
Seed
innovations C1
Example 1: A movement for Mental Health…. C3
C2
. @Westley, SiG, University of
Waterloo

25. Example 2 :Saving
Endangered Species!

26. Interpersonal and knowledge
management competencies
required!
 Interpersonal  Knowledge
 Convening management
 Conflict  Creating a common
management vision
 Facilitation  Enhancing
sensemaking

28. Example 3. Plan Canada and
the RDSP!
 “Every innovation has two  The social
parts: the first is the
invention of the thing itself; innovators +
the second is the  The institutional
preparation of expectations
so that when the invention entrepreneurs
arrives it seems both
surprising and familiar -
something long awaited”
Edwin Land

29. Interpersonal and Knowledge
skills required!
 Building social capital  Recognizing and
and mobilizing it in championing
support of novelty innovative idea
 Building intellectual/  Connecting the idea to
cultural capital and “windows of
mobilizing it in support opportunity” at multiple
 Building financial scales
capital and mobilizing it  System understanding
in support and emerging pattern
recognition

31. Example 4: The
Great Bear Rain
Forest

32. Social-Ecological Significance!
 25% of world’s Coastal Temperate
Rainforest
 Richest bio-mass on earth
 100+ pristine valleys (none in US)
 20%+ of the world’s wild salmon Spirit
bears, wolves, grizzlies
 Cultural, economic and social
significance: competing claims
courtesy of Darcy Riddell

33. Competing Claims!
 Activists, logging companies,
researchers, First Nations,
Government….all laid
claim1990s: widespread Land
Use Plans
 From mid-1980s-mid-1990s -
conflict and blockades in
Clayoquot Sound: mass arrests
raise the stakes
adapted from Darcy Riddell

34. Final Agreements!
 Permanent protection – 5 million acres
 New parks - 3.3 million acres
 Previous parks - 1 million acres
 New no-logging zones - 736,000 acres
 EBM – 21 million acres
 $35 million mitigation package for forest workers
 $120 Million for conservation economy
 First Nations approve all plans
 International Marketplace shift
 Model used in Chile, Boreal, USA
courtesy of Darcy Riddell

35. Facing the Shadow!
 Forest workers: “capuccino-sucking urban enviros”
 First Nations: “eco-colonialists”
 Forest Companies: “they are trying to destroy us
and the province we care about” and dueling
scientists
 Government: “irresponsible” and “enemies of BC”
 Other environmentalists: “corporate sell-outs”
Grains of truth= “breathe”
courtesy of Darcy Riddell

36. In sum….the process of
transformation:!
 International level - inside out strategy - using global
market resources to reframe provincial “playing field”
 Fertile ground fo innovation
 Negotiation level =Change in stance: Owning the
shadow of environmentalism – solutions space

37. The essence of an innovation!
 A change in meaning
 - “branding” The Great Bear Rain Forest
 “reframing” from the “war in the woods” to a generative
collaboration
 New patterns of resource flows
 social financing and the conservation economy
 New relationships and practices
 An experience of integration
 Different logging technologies become viable; different
networks for product distribution

38. Continues to stimulate!
 Market demands for “Ancient Forest
Friendly” papers
 Additional innovations: the
“conservation economy” takes hold
 New forms of social financing - Coastal
Opportunities funds, First Nations
forestry companies

39. Interpersonal and knowledge
skills needed!
 Building coalitions  Social Marketing
 Managing conflict  Bridging
 Securing capital for perspectives and
a focused kinds of knowledge
momentum  Owning the shadow
 Building vertical
commitments

40. Summary!
 To understand social innovation demands a
complexity perspective
 To understand how social inventions have a broad
impact, marketing models can only tell part of the
story
 Cross-scale dynamics are key and institutional
entrepreneurs + actor nets are as important for
impact as are social entrepreneurs.
 Institutional entrepreneurs draw on a range of
transactional and translational skills and
competencies to manage different phases of social
innovation for greater impact.

41. “Farmers don’t grow crops. They
create the conditions for crops to
grow.” - Gareth Morgan