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Short abstract

Responding to recurring calls for more conceptual clarity and solid theory on social innovation, this paper proposes a social-material and relational conceptual heuristic of social innovation.

Long abstract

We conceptualize social Innovation (SI) as sets of ideas, objects and/or activities that change social-material relations and involve new ways of doing, thinking and organizing. We distinguish and specify different relevant units of analysis, including SI-initiatives, SI-actors and SI-fields. Furthermore, we explore the transformative potential of SI in terms of the processes through which SI-initiatives/actors/fields challenge, alter and/or replace dominant structures and institutions in a specific social-material context.

In our social-material conceptualization of transformative social innovation, we bridge relational approaches developed in sociology, actor-network theory and co-production studies, with more evolutionary perspectives as found in socio-technical transition research and sustainability studies, so as to offer a critical and systemic perspective on the transformative potential of social innovation.

Examples of social innovation with transformative ambitions include a very wide diversity (e.g. sharing platforms, citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting, food cooperatives, urban farming, co-working spaces, digital fabrication, ecovillages, and many more). Based on this empirical comparison and our conceptual heuristic, we conclude with avenues for future research on social innovation from a social-material perspective.