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Centre for Social Innovation

Social innovation Social innovations are new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds — from working conditions and education to community development and health — that extend and strengthen civil society. Social innovation includes the social processes of innovation, such as open source methods and techniques and also the innovations which have a social purpose — like microcredit or distance learning. Social entrepreneurship can be innovative and it also overlaps with innovation in public policy and governance. Social Innovation is often an effort of mental creativity which involves fluency and flexibility from a wide range of discipline. Social Innovation is emerging worldwide as people realize that it is time to work together to find new solutions to the challenges facing our society. History[edit] Developments since 2000[edit] Institutional support[edit] Local and Regional development[edit] Some noted scholars[edit] See also[edit] References[edit]

Génération de l'innovation sociale Quatre partenaires – la fondation, ainsi que l’Université de Waterloo, le MaRS Discovery District (Toronto) et le PLAN Institute (Vancouver) – collaborent au programme Génération de l’innovation sociale (SiG) pour développer, encourager et soutenir l’innovation sociale continue. Leur objectif est de découvrir, de tester et de partager de nouvelles façons de s’attaquer aux enjeux sociaux auxquels font face les Canadiens. « Innovation » signifie généralement faire mieux, de manière plus avisée et plus efficace. En affaires, cela va de soi; l’innovation est constamment encouragée par la formation, des investissements et l’intérêt du public. Le secteur sans but lucratif ou bénévole n’obtient pas un tel appui : il existe un grand nombre d’entrepreneurs sociaux mais la plupart des organismes subventionnaires cherchent des projets « sûrs ». La volonté d’apprendre est un corollaire à la prise de risques éclairée. Vision stratégique Financement total 10 000 000 $ – contribution de la fondation

The processes of social innovation This week’s innovation conversation is more closely aligned to the original notion of RSA-style interdisciplinary conversations. We initially framed this discussion around social enterprise, then social design, finally the broader notion of social innovation. Last weeks technology innovation conversation surprisingly concluded that it was creating new relationships that matter in technology adoption and we find some similar themes emerging here; the importance of the social context, how to enable the social processes of innovation, whilst not forgetting practical business examples already being implemented. Maverick Networks; In terms of social context Nick Jankel comments that RSA fellows in the 18th Century had “the temporal and emotional freedom to think, meet, talk and co-create The Enlightenment.” However it now seems that you need to be an institutional ‘maverick’ to become innovation. image: Social & Policy Innovation in the Obama Admin 2o2 by dpict.info

Social innovation Social innovation is one of those phrases that is in danger of becoming nearly meaningless due to its overuse, and use in such a wide variety of applications. Today, most businesses want to have some claim on the idea that they’re doing something good, and most nonprofits want to be able to say that they’re moving beyond old models of charity and bringing something more innovative to their work. But what’s an actual definition of social innovation? That’s harder to come by. And without a definition, it’s hard to point at who is doing it well and who is doing it badly. At the 2011 Social Innovation Summit, PwC convened a variety of leaders in the field--including Charles Best from Donors Choose; Rahul Raj, Walmart.com’s director of sustainability; and Nancy Lublin, CEO of DoSomething.org--responded to the question: "What is social innovation?" This is a teaser of the various speakers, but stay tuned.

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