A European innovation ecosystem for social innovation

Social innovation offers citizens and enterprises a means to engage in meaningful and beneficial activity. The EU has the potential to catalyse a much larger implementation of social innovation to address crucial challenges at European, national and local levels. Sustainability, scalability and replicability are necessary features if social innovation is to diffuse on the scale needed for Europe-wide progress. There is an opportunity in the next Framework Programme to include socially-driven missions. As well as RTD support, these require social innovation in the form of policies targeting behaviour through a combination of information (enabled by digital innovation), incentives, sanctions and shifts in socio-cultural norms. The current innovation ecosystem lacks a clearly articulated and resourced demand-pull. Public procurement is the most readily-available instrument. While public authorities can share costs and experiences in procurement, hybrid organisations may be needed to aggregate and diffuse solutions and potentially to anchor and coordinate missions. Social innovation ecosystems also need to secure the necessary financial support. Many current sources of finance have a narrowly-defined mission or regional focus. Hence, it is necessary to transfer and roll-out financial infrastructure in parallel with business models for social enterprises, creating a double diffusion challenge.