Paper long abstract:

Studies of innovation point out the key role of the generalization process through which major impact are generated. Without generalization, novelty is limited to a small set of first users and its benefits remain low. In the literature, this process is related to two complementary mechanisms:

- standardization of the technology, which allows to exploit increasing returns related to learning and economies of scale;

- standardization of the users' milieu, which involves construction of markets and change of users' habits, and which may imply creative destruction (which is why we don't use the term 'diffusion').

In recent years, public authorities have shown a strong interest for social innovation (SI). Highlighting the need of SI to face big challenges, major institutions generally underline that SI hardly generalizes and that its use is very often limited to the small collective that generated the novelty. Hence, they identify barriers to the diffusion of social innovation and suggest out to get rid of them (BEPA 2010).

In this paper, we argue that referring to the processes and the semantic of innovation to deal with social innovation is misleading. We argue that the mechanisms of generalization do not lie in the standardization of technologies/users but in the dissemination of the capacity of collective experimentation. We thus suggest that social innovation leads to rethink the production and use of knowledge in society.

Paper long abstract:

My proposal seeks to cross-fertilize between sts, (social) innovation studies and studies of social movements by focussing on manufactured uncertainties and the 'antagonism of risk' (Beck 2009) as drivers for societal self-reflection and re-politicisation. This post-industrial antagonism between 'those who enjoy the benefits of risks (decision-makers) and the ones who have to bear the costs (the affected)' (ibd.) plays a vital role in all three disciplinary backgrounds, even though in different terms. While conceptual discussion is often about interpretative flexibility and social contingency of given technical, economic and/or political orders, many empirical studies focus on socio-technical struggles and their contribution to enrich political debates. All three backgrounds emphasize the significance of collective experimentation and learning, particularly in the face of manufactured uncertainties, in order to explore 'states of possible worlds' in more democratic forums (cf. Callon et al. 2001, Latour & Weibel 2005, Offe 1985, Mouleart et al. 2013, Klein et al. 2014). Thus, they are concerned with the contested shaping of human development. The interest in the asymmetric conflicts between technocratic and emancipatory rationalities and in innovative actor networks, which demonstrate the 'capability of society to take action upon itself' (Touraine 1977), creates a methodological preference for localized approaches from below. Taking these affinities into deeper inspection, the paper wants to reconsider the meaning of the 'innovation paradigm shift' discussed at the disciplinary crossroads (Rammert 1997, Rip et al. 2010, Kropp 2013) by focussing on 'uncertainty', 'knowledge production and 'civic rationality'.

Paper long abstract:

What are the direct implications of 'social innovation' for collective action? Much implicated academic and policy activity around 'technoscience', 'innovation governance', 'sociotechnical systems' and 'technological transitions' tends (if only implicitly) to assume as a deep social order, that action depends on knowledge. Such ideas are common to a variety of otherwise contrasting disciplinary approaches: in positive and co-productionist traditions, qualitative and quantitative styles, critical and instrumental modes and across many different empirical settings. Strong drives in all these fields for 'comprehensive ontologies', 'integrated understandings', 'coherent multidisciplinary frameworks' and transcendent notions of 'reflexivity' illuminate deep commitments on the necessary orderings of knowledge and action. Seen this way, social innovation may hold profound implications for collective action. But these are indirect: mediated by general prioritisations in relations between knowledge and action.

This paper will explore the possibility that the reverse is the case. Here, the apparent primacy of knowledge over action is seen as an artefact of mutually reinforcing political dynamics - reflecting a positive feedback between policy pressures for justification and disciplinary appetites for linked kinds of privilege. Social innovation is thus engaged with as a subject rather than an object. Instead of assuming a dependent role, social innovation is the prior material field that constitutes the contours of social understandings and imaginations - and forms the only non-self-contradictory formulation for reflexivity itself. Rather than seeking to understand social innovation, then, it is (whatever the disciplinary vanities), primarily through social innovation itself that society enacts any kind of change in understanding.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the role of online tools in the spread of resistance activities. Our conceptual background is based on the concepts of social inquiry, positive freedom and creative democracy from Dewey. We believe that these concepts are fruitful to analyse new forms of online resistance if articulated with a socio-materialist framework. An illustrative case study demonstrates the potential of this mixed-framework, by analysing how online resistance activities were enhanced from an imbrication of technology, civil society, and individual activities.

Paper long abstract:

The theme of social innovation has emerged in recent decades and references to it are steadily increasing in the international scientific literature. Certainly, in the 1930s , Schumpeter studied the innovation process; he highlighted the phenomenon of creative destruction and the role of the entrepreneur, echoing the concerns of Weber and Durkheim on the change and the regulation of modern societies. But since the 1990s, the novelty lies in the enlargement of the innovation to the social dimension in several areas -management science , science of arts and creativity- as well as multidisciplinary approaches which examine the compatibility between economic success and socio- environmental improvements, forms of local development, political governance and public management.

This contribution aims at locating the use of social innovation in historical perspective by clarifying the reasons why it is often associated with social and solidarity economy or social entrepreneurship . The hypothesis put forward is that modern democratic societies are not characterized , as it is often argued , as a market economy, but rather by complex institutional arrangements between market and solidarity . Social innovation is in this case a response to the crises of the arrangements that have arisen in the last third of the twentieth century.

Paper long abstract:

Social innovations are often distinguished from technological innovations in particular and from social change in general. But from an STS perspective, they are inseparably tied into the socio-technical innovations dynamics of modern societies. My presentation will trace the interdependencies of social and technical innovations with questions of social change in modern societies by looking how social innovations are increasingly employed as a mode and means of societal change.

As a mode of societal change, social innovations have been used as political instruments to counter social unrest and tension, for instance the introduction of social security laws at the end of the 19th century in Germany. They indicate an active manipulation of societal structures - either to initiate transformative change, but sometimes also to maintain the status quo with only minimal adaptations. And as a mode of social change, social innovations have become increasingly prominent in the last decades. As a means of societal change, the mechanisms of social innovations are increasingly seen as novel forms of governance where the established solutions of markets or bureaucracies fail. In contrast to top down political reform, social innovations are conceived as local and bottom up participation processes that help to manage the complexities of modern societies. As such, they have a limited scope and can hardly be scaled up to regional, national or even European levels.

Paper long abstract:

The literature on social innovations focuses on alternative approaches to organising the provision of (and the valuation of) products and services that meet societal needs that are not met through conventional channels. Alternatively, institutional innovations are imagined in terms of institutional change: "institutional change[i]s a difference in form, quality, or state over time in an institution. (…) If the change is a novel or unprecedented departure from the past, then it represents an institutional innovation." (Hargrave and Van de Ven 2006: 866) In this paper, I examine when and how social innovations might be characterised as institutional innovations, that is, when do social innovations become institutionalised and how might we understand the boundaries of social innovations from an institutional perspective? I do this by exploring social innovations in agriculture. I analyse three examples of social innovation from three different countries, each at a different stage of institutionalisation. First, I explore participatory guarantee systems in Bolivia, which are currently institutionalised into national organic policy. Second, I explore an integrated production and training centre in Benin developed by a religious NGO, which is only now beginning to gain both market and public sector recognition. Finally, I explore Rainforest Alliance certified tea production in Tanzania, which has become institutionalised within the private sector, but has been facilitated by collaboration and reorganization of public sector organizations. Through these examples I focus on the questions of the boundaries of social innovations in terms of scale, knowledge, actors and market dynamics.

Paper long abstract:

The recently reformed Committee on World Food Security (CFS) constitutes a social innovation at the global scale. For many years, civil society organizations have been organizing themselves to influence international policies related to agriculture and food. They invested in the CFS believing that it could represent an alternative intergovernmental forum to the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organization. Thus, they managed to increase the inclusiveness of this international arena through the creation of a mechanism that facilitated the participation of those groups most affected by food insecurity and malnutrition: peasants, fishers, rural workers, women, landless people, etc.

The reformed CFS has already experienced some success in reaching international agreements, notably the adoption in 2012 of the global guidelines on the governance of land. Yet, the current challenge now lies in the implementation of these agreements. The CFS is mandated to "establish an innovative monitoring mechanism, including the definition of common indicators, to monitor progress towards these agreed upon objectives and actions" (CFS 2009). To this end, an Open Ended Working Group on monitoring has been created.

This communication will explore emerging contestations among CFS stakeholders regarding why monitoring is important and how it should be achieved. Building on existing work in STS, it will show how diverse forms of knowledge and evidence enter into tension. Our hypothesis is that, although CFS stakeholders managed to reach an agreement on substantive standards, they will not manage to reach one on the forms of evaluation, thus leading to an instable coexistence between various normativities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the 'tension' involved in STS and social innovation through a comparison of models dealing with 'extensive and intensive growth' (K. Marx, A. Marshall, G.A. Feldman, S. Kuznets, G. Ofur, P. Thiel, et al.). In particular, it focuses on strategies of social and economic innovation in both market and non-market environments in the work of Soviet engineer-economist and planner Grigory A. Feldman and in previous and subsequent studies on the theme.

Special attention is placed on the connection between 'innovation diffusion theory' (E. Rogers) and 'extension theory,' in agriculture, higher education and other collective (shared or distributed) learning projects. The paper includes a short genealogical study of the terms 'extension' and 'intension' across several academic fields, including philosophy, mathematics, economics, mass media and STS, running from Descartes and Leibniz to A.N. Whitehead, M. McLuhan and S. Lash.

The historical analysis of 'extension' re-connects with contemporary challenges of science, technology and innovation in the ideas of entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. This approach presents an updated version of 'intensive and extensive growth,' which uses the classical Degrees vs. Units distinction to highlight modern-day problems of innovation diffusion and scale. According to Thiel, 'intensive thinking' (vertical) contributes more to innovation than 'extensive thinking' (horizontal), which makes it of greater value and demand for science and technology development.

The paper ends by addressing socially responsible innovation based on proportionality, which can be measured in degrees using the notions of extension, intension and the root term 'tension.'

Paper long abstract:

The association "Pole Bio" has created a multi-tenant project called "Melibio" to support organic agriculture in the Massif Central region, France. Pole bio brings together a group of heteroegeneous actors: researchers in biology, computer scientists, Chamber of Agriculture officials, trainers, agricultural experts, farmers' associations. The project is funded by the region and aims to find new techniques to tackle the climate change.

The project has two main objectives: the first one consists in producing a decision-making model to assist seeding. This decision-making model will be embedded within an online platform to assist farmers to calculate the ideal mix for seeding flora in meadows. The ideal-type process is the following: farmers will have to enter local data into the software (such as location, soil type, weather conditions), and will get back advices for seeding recipes. The second objective is related to the creation of a wiki-based knowledge platform to articulate both expert and lay knowledge to improve the collective expertise of the organic farming community in that region.

Given the complexity of the relationships between group members due to a number of factors such as personal interests, institutional interests, and geographic distance, we wish to focus our interest in the role played by sociomaterial assemblage for social innovation. To do so, we suggest to look at the role of material artefacts during thinking activities

Paper long abstract:

Social innovation has been used as a concept in a diversity of situations, sometimes in a superficial way, sometimes in a well-thought manner.

In this presentation we first provide a selection of diverse uses of the concept of social innovation in particular moments of the history of practice and thought of social change. Next we reflect on the analytical utility of the social innovation concept in these moments, to then draw some lessons on a coherent epistemology for social innovation research.

To arrive at such epistemology we will address the following questions:

1. Which are particular problematics in which social innovation concepts are useful to lead a problematization process [of social change]?

2. Depending on the problematic, which theories of social innovation (and transformation) are eligible?

3. Should social innovation research in all cases be action research or does progress in social innovation analysis also require moments of detached reflection?

The presentation will finish with some epistemological guidelines for leading social innovation research.