Actors in the Social Innovation Process: The Case of Mobile Courts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

There is ample literature within the realm of innovation management suggesting that social innovation is a process characterized by different stages. However, it is not too clear how different actors perform different activities within each stage of this process, thus lending us only a parochial view of social innovation so far. Taking influence from Murray et al.’s seminal work in 2010, this paper presents the role of actors within different stages of the social innovation process including prompts, proposal of ideas, prototyping, sustainability, scaling and systemic change. The case of the mobile courts project in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been taken as a social innovation by employing qualitative methods. Results suggest that mobile courts as an innovation for quick and low-cost dispensation of justice went through the first three stages successfully due to the crucial role played by the then Chief Justice as one of the key actors. However, the project encountered various problems during the sustainability stage such as security, legislation, resources, defective judicial system, lack of awareness, and people’s perceptions about mobile courts. Consequently mobile court as an innovation did not pass through the last two stages, i.e. scaling and systematic change. One of the key problems was weak cross-sectoral collaboration among actors. The paper concludes by suggesting implications for future research on and practice of social innovations