Central to this research project is establishing a new research agenda for social innovation which
problematizes this simple concept by identifying the micro- and meso-level processes involved, and
relating them back to concepts in existing innovation literatures.
The issue for this project as an Exploration Scheme in contrast to a standard Working Group or
research network is that there are currently two critical elements missing from a satisfactory research
agenda. The first is there is no strong conceptual understanding of the issue of social innovation, its
dynamics, determinants and drivers. The second is that there is no natural community of social
innovation scholars, as much of the recent micro-scale activity on social innovation in practice has
taken place outside the traditional domains of innovation scholarship. Therefore this project has as its
focus the mobilising of a community that takes social innovation concepts and the research agenda as
the basis for future collective action (at the level of the community).
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