Social innovation is an initiative, product or process or program that profoundly changes the basic routines, resource and authority flows or beliefs of any social system. Successful social innovations have durability and broad impact. While social innovation has recognizable stages and phases, achieving durability and scale is a dynamic process that requires both emergence of opportunity and deliberate agency, and a connection between the two. The capacity of any society to create a steady flow of social innovations, particularly those which re-engage vulnerable populations, is an important contributor to the overall social and ecological resilience.
Social innovation is needed to build social and ecological resilience in the face of mounting complex challenges to our economic, social, political and cultural institutions. Intractable problems are not new, but their interconnection in the context of global systems is presenting a new level of urgency and uncertainty. Building capacity at local, regional, national and international levels for not only new inventions and creativity in the social arena but also for system transformation can build resilience in the face of this uncertainty. In particular, the re-engagement of vulnerable populations can have a positive impact on our capacity for innovation and can add to the resilience of the whole.
Learning Community 