Crafting Micro-social Innovations: Insights from the Bombay Mothers and Children Welfare Society

Social innovation is an emerging field of research and practice. There is an increasing importance of social innovations for creating social change. Drawing insights from the case study of a social entrepreneurial venture (The Bombay Mothers and Children Welfare Society), this paper explains the decision logic of a social entrepreneur in crafting social innovations for solving complex organizational and social problems. The decision logic involved understanding the complexity and interconnectedness of the problem and finding ways for solving social and organizational problems. The thought process (decision logic) has culminated in the creation of several innovative ideas for mobilizing resources, nurturing human resources, and fostering individual-community-public partnership and the idea of walking the last mile with the government. These innovations emerge as a response to organizational and societal problems. These are micro-social innovations that are low cost and rooted in the strategic orientation of reducing costs, improving efficiency, and a quest for self-reliance. They are proved to be successful in the turnaround of an ailing social organization and spearheading social change in several Tribal villages. It also helped in engaging a large pool of professionals both in the corporate and government for bringing social change in these villages. The findings have implications for the creation of social ventures and crafting strategies for social change.