SIMPACT Reports

As a first step towards a better understanding of the economic foundation of social innovation, a «Multidisciplinary Literature Review» has been undertaken to advance understanding within this field. The review lays the foundation for a theoretically sound and comprehensive concept to help identify the numerous factors that underly economic and social impacts. This version of SIMPACT Working Paper Series summarises the results of the literature review to feed the discussion towards a multidisciplinary middle-range theory on the economic dimensions of social innovation.

This report describes the theoretical model of social innovation to aim at getting further insights about its economic underpinnings. The baseline model provides a set of predictions by simulating the analytical solution. The model is chosen in a parsimonious manner in order to ensure a tractable and analytical solution, which summarises the level of social innovation as a function of the model parameters and variables.

Drawing from the rich but scattered evidence on social innovation, meta-analysis was applied to verify theoretically deduced social innovation categories (see D1.1) and related hypotheses at the macro-level of welfare regimes by systematically integrating findings from existing social innovation case studies and analyse differences in the results, thus adding value to existing knowledge while avoiding duplication of research efforts. This lead to the deduction of meta-components, ?objectives and -principles and its characteristics under distinct welfare regimes across Europe.

A comparative analysis of 60 social innovations was conducted to substantiate findings from the meta-analysis (D3.1) by in-depth analysis of specific economic factors. In this context, SIBs and BCSs are conceived as integrated research processes, adopting different but complementary desk and field research methodologies. BCSs advanced the understanding of the economic aspects of already-known and described cases, by means of deep qualitative desk research. SIBs deepened our understanding of innovation processes, developmental trajectories and stakeholder interactions.

The report contributes to the debate on the characteristics that make SI different from technological innovation as well as the differences between SI business models and economic innovation business models. It discusses the complex nature of SI business models that often develop in a contingency manner as the result of the construction of those commercial activities instrumental to the sustainability of SIs.

Considering the specificity of the SI processes and the complexity of SI Business Models this report untertakes a multi-disciplinary study to advance the understanding of the different factors influencing its peculiar nature. It builds a theoretically sound and comprehensive deepening of the numerous factors that underlie the actual economic structure of social innovations and will enhance differences or similarities with other forms of innovation.

This report takes a context perspective on drivers and barriers for SI; as SIMPACT's research shows, every driver for SI can also feature as a barrier and vice versa and SI is very much context dependant this report suggests a model for identifying stimulating or hindering factors of different contexts of SI.

The report outlines the final set of developed indicators and exemplifies their application by means of indicator types and the analysis of SI economics for different categories of the SIMPACT social innovation cases as well as different categories of national and regional contexts for SI.

In this report, a conceptual framework is presented to conduct an ex-ante impact assessment for social innovation. The building blocks for an ex-ante impact assessment are goal formulation; developing the relationships between inputs, outputs and outcomes; determining the role of stakeholders to achieve the objectives; calculating the impact; and deciding on the social innovation. A toolbox has been developed, which consists of a series of steps sprung from our conceptual framework.

This report contains a toolbox for use with the Ex-Ante Impact Assessment for social innovations as was developed in the report D7.1. This toolbox proposes a series of convenient and useful tools to apply in an ex-ante assessment of social innovation within SIMPACT's policy areas unemployment, immigration and demographic change. We have conducted three supporting case studies in which the framework and tools have been applied. The lessons from these cases are included in this report. Our framework is not necessarily an addition of another full-blown social impact assessment instrument, but has the aim of providing «grip» to policymakers, social investors and social innovators within this complex process.