Research at Social Innovation Europe

Social Innovation Europe

Funding and Finance

A Road Map for Effective Assessment

Strengthening Social Innovation in Europe

Background and Introduction

What is social innovation?

“Social Innovations are innovations that are social both in their ends and in their means. Specifically, we define social innovations as new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs (more effectively than alternatives) and create new social relationships or collaborations“ *


*Caulier-Grice, J., Kahn, L., Mulgan, G., Pulford, L. & Vasconcelos, D (2010) Study on Social Innovation: A paper prepared by the Social Innovation eXchange (SIX) and the Young Foundation for the Bureau of European Policy Advisors. Young Foundation/European Union



Why now?• Shifts in the public sector: debt, deficits, pressure

for efficiency, spending pressures: ageing predicted to drive EU public spending up by about 4 percentage points between 2004 and 2050.

• Shifts in the public: expectations of engagement and involvement in change

• Scale of the social economy –11m jobs in Europe, growing numbers of social enterprises, civil society engaging with jobs and value


Slide 6 The Young Foundation 2011

Social Innovation – solutions to meet complex social needs ?


How?



Key Question: How can societies innovate better and faster? How can European Commission catalyse this process?

Social innovators have commitment, experience and energy.

But the field of social innovation lacks the systematic and sophisticated infrastructures of support available to other fields – finance, measurement, skills and competencies, enabling cultures ……

Aims of Social Innovation Europe Reports

• How can the European Commission (EC) establish a comprehensive ecology finance capable of supporting social innovations from idea generation to prototyping to scaling up?

• How can the EC build up a knowledge-base on what metrics are useful and facilitate consensus-building around metrics for specific sectors and embed processes for knowledge sharing.


Guiding Purposes for Commission Action

The main purposes that should guide European Commission action on Social Innovation include:

•Smart, Sustainable, Inclusive economic growth•Higher public services productivity •Success in handling major societal challenges


“I think the Social Innovation Initiative should not be just a thing for respectable Think Tanks and very nice papers, but for concrete consequences in policy making and policy outcomes, because we really need this immediately”

President Barosso – Social Innovation Europe initiative launch event, Brussels, March 2011


Research at Social Innovation Europe

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