Measuring social innovation
Judith Terstriep, Gorgi Krlev, Georg Mildenberger, Simone Strambach, Jan-Frederik Thurmann, Laura-Fee Wloka · Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2021
Social innovation is a transformational process affecting social practices by providing more social value to society. We know that social innovation is driven by a multitude of actors from different sectors and that varying context conditions and social discourses play a major role in shaping social innovation. However, the three levels of organizations, regional context, and resonance in discourse have rarely been conceptually linked to each other, not to speak of operationalized as measures. In this article, we review the rare previous research measuring social innovation, develop an integrated measurement model that offers to advance research in this area, and demonstrate how the model has been tested empirically. We discuss what our research contributes to improving our understanding of the complexities of social innovation, and the shaping of emergent social practices more generally.