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Purpose: Against the backdrop of clear paradoxes and confusion in prevailing innovation policies, the contours of a new innovation paradigm, as elaborated in this paper, are becoming visible and causing social innovation to grow in importance. Originality/gap/relevance/implications: However, innovation research is still lacking sustained and systematic analysis of social innovation, its theories, characteristics, and impacts. The purpose of this paper is to focus on a theoretically sound concept of social innovation as a precondition for an integrated theory of socio-technological innovation in which social innovation is more than an appendage of technological innovation. Key methodological aspects: The paper presents first empirical results of the global research project "SI-DRIVE: Social Innovation - Driving Force of Social Change" and introduces key findings of a global mapping of social innovation initiatives. This quantitative mapping is based upon 1.005 social innovation initiatives. Summary of key results: The mapping underlines the broad range of actors involved in the mapped initiatives and thereby confirms the need for a cross-sectoral concept of social innovation. It reveals a high diversity of social needs and societal challenges addressed by the initiatives as well as a high dependency on networks. The results also show that 90% of the initiatives are scaling. Key considerations/conclusions: Finally, on the basis of these empirical results, a recourse to Gabriel Tarde's social theory allows us to widen a perspective which was narrowed to economic and technological innovations by Schumpeter and after him by the sociology of technology, and to include social innovations in all their diversity.

Abstract:The state of research on social entrepreneurship is unsatisfactory. Social entrepreneurship research has been a key topic of the social innovation debate, contributing a lot to the development of the design, motives and practices to solve social demands and societal challenges mainly in the third sector, focusing at the role, possibilities and constraints of a social entrepreneurs and the social (instead of a market-driven) economy. However, the strong focus on social entrepreneurship fails to recognize other key aspects and the potential of a comprehensive concept of social innovation and its relationship to social change. Since findings from innovation research point out the systemic character of innovations, the strong concentration on social entrepreneurs as individuals responsible for innovations can be challenged. Instead, a differentiated perspective of the role of social entrepreneurs is needed, taking into account the different phases of the social innovation process as well as cross-sector collaborations with the whole diversity of societal actors (private and public actors, universities, and civil society).

This article builds on the emerging discourse on "ecosystems of social innovation" and develops a model to identify and analyse driving and hindering factors for social innovation initiatives. Social innovation -especially in the context of social entrepreneurship -is increasingly gaining momentum in the European welfare landscape. That growing importance challenges the scientific discourse as it asks for criteria of how to support, foster and sustain social innovation. This article utilizes two case studies illustrating different levels of drivers and barriers and develops a model for understanding contexts of social innovation. Four interrelated context levels are identified which constitute social innovation ecosystems: actors, structures, functions, and norms. The "onion"-model can be used by social innovators, financiers and policy makers alike in order to better and more strategically support social innovations themselves and to improve the framework conditions promoting or impeding them. The model allows for a better understanding of the diversity of supporting and hindering factors initiatives can face in any given urban or national social innovation ecosystem.

Citizen science is becoming increasingly important as a new and participative mode of knowledge production. An essential element of citizen science is co-creation. Co-creation is by no means limited to a modus operandi for participatory science, but introduces a form of collaborative way of working with society in the sense of citizen science. Results from the H2020 SISCODE project show that co-creation is located inside and between different sectors of society. This article focuses on the question of how co-creation can be better understood in different contexts, and presents a heuristic model that has already been used for case study analyses in the SISCODE project. After an introduction to the field of co-creation and a brief description of the heuristic model, its capability is exemplarily demonstrated via application to two selected cases, followed by a discussion of central learnings and implications for further research on co-creation.