Conference stream: Towards a critical understanding of social entrepreneurship
Innovation in and by the community: ethnographies from within the box
Innovation is a concept that
permeates through industries, sectors and disciplines. It is the pinnacle of
professional achievement (whether you are a singer, a teacher or an experienced
manager) and private, public and social economy organisations’ ambitions.
Innovation textbooks have said it all when suggesting that as a society we now
live under the ‘innovation imperative’ or the ‘innovation hegemony’. For
organisations, failure to be innovative – or, at least, perceived as such - is
equivalent to a prolonged and painful death.
Despite the fact that innovation
is often quoted as an inherent characteristic of social enterprises, coupled
with the recent upsurge of interest in the wider phenomenon known as social
innovation, there is little in the way of systematic research focusing on the
distinct patterns, drivers and inhibitors of innovation or the processes that
lead to it within the third sector.
This paper starts by exploring
the meaning of innovation in the context of social entrepreneurship and by
suggesting an innovation typology based on examples from within the social
economy in the UK. The paper then expands on one particular type of innovation
encountered empirically by the authors, community-led, where a distinct
community has conceived, developed and implemented an effective solution to an
acute social problem.
For the purpose of this paper,
analysing the trajectory of and the mechanisms used by four community
innovations (or community-led innovations), the word community has been used as a descriptive category with multiple
aspects. The four accounts, ethnographic in nature and based in London,
correspond to an ethnic community (based on the example of a Latin American
social enterprise), a geographical community (based on the recent developments
of a community anchor based in North East London), a community of interest
(based on a socially enterprising initiative developed for and by people with
mental health difficulties) and a community of practice (based on the explosion
of practitioner-led social enterprise conferences, un-conferences, informal
networks, professional associations and virtual platforms).
The transformative initiatives
discussed draw on pragmatic creativity grounded in experience to improve lives
despite the restraining systems in which they are embedded. Most operate at a
local level, using and generating social capital. They do not conform to the
rhetoric or to the replicable model of social innovation presented by some
foundations and business schools, and face an uncertain future. In exploring
their examples, this paper highlights the value of looking inside the box,
utilising local know-how, maximising available resources and exploiting small
windows of opportunity to achieve social change. It seeks to rescue social
innovation as an activity for communities of people responding to need, rather
than the preserve of outside specialists pursuing innovation for its own sake.
