Social innovation and social change

The objective of the chapter is to identify a number of research avenues and to outline a research agenda to better understand the relationship between social innovation and social change and provide a theoretical foundation. The chapter is broken down into three main sections: it starts with a short overview of the state of the art of the conceptualization of social change in social innovation research. The here discussed concepts and their gaps point to desiderata for a social-theoretical concept development. To understand social transformation processes in their complexity, a theoretically grounded concept that makes the dynamics of social practices the central focus of analysis is needed. Although some progress has been made in recent years a widely accepted theoretical model founded by empirical research is still missing. And thus the chapter concludes with an outline of major research desiderata that could lead to a stronger empirical foundation of the theoretical considerations.