Research on social innovation: advancing the frontiers of social innovation research and policy

There is much we still need to know about social innovation. Where do ideas come from? What resources do they need in order to develop and grow? Why are good ideas blocked or stunted and why sometimes do bad ideas spread? What is the role of social movements, governments, funders and entrepreneurs in generating ideas and taking them to large scale impact? This chapter suggests some of the routes to better answers, addressing: 1. The links between social innovation and new kinds of social science, including their overlap with social R&D as an aspect of policy, including the new opportunities of computational social science, the role of labs and social science parks 2. Analysing sectors as industries in order to guide their shaping, and why this scale of analysis, drawing on industrial economics, may be particularly useful for understanding the dynamics of social innovation. 3. Using data more effectively: and how we may start tracking the growth and evolution of social ideas. 4. Making sense of policy and designing better policies: and what can be learned from the many governments that have over the last decade attempted to support social innovation more directly.