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Short abstract:

Presenting ideas for and lessons learned from experimenting with critical approaches to social innovation (SI) education within an entrepreneurial framework. Discussing key concepts, how to foster reflexive awareness in SI, and dialectics of SI as means of (democratic) transformation.

Long abstract:

Social innovators shove marginalized subjects into throats of labor based alienation and exploitation, and they populate niches in economically developing regions; using individuals with autism-spectrum disorder to hunt for bugs in code, or selling cheap glasses in developing countries. Social innovation is notoriously packed with ambiguity. It might be a driver for transformative processes, or perpetuating exploitation and maintaining disparity in disguise.

Social Innovation attracts money. Profiting of a social innovation funding scheme for higher education myself, I dedicated these resources to the creation of a critical framework for social innovation education. I present insights, experiences, and learnings from that endeavor. We tested our approach with a class aimed at entrepreneurial students. The seminar introduces a systemic understanding of social innovation that contains said ambiguity and considers social innovation processes themselves as interferences with institutions and systems of social practice. By incorporating feminist approaches and social criticism concepts such as Bourdieu's theory of habitus and fields, Frankfurt School, and Butlerian intersectionality, the course highlights gendered issues of entrepreneurship and how social innovation imaginaries might corroborate hegemonic normality, subjectivation, and erasing the unintelligible. The class concludes with a social innovation event that incorporates critical insights from research on similar events, such as hackathons. Thus, we use project-progress forms that critically asks about cui bono and cui malo. We also promote other means for social impact, like art and activism, that are more suited to provoke democratic dialogues and channel political power rather than making working around governance a business model.