Who are social innovators and change-makers?

Vern's picture
Submitted by Vern on 13 April 2011 - 1:58am
I recently had a look through the people profiled on the ASIX website as change-makers. I wanted to see how socially diverse and occupationally broad are the "change-makers".
 
The first page that came up comprised:
   
design consultant; management consultant; NGO strategic planner; project management; educational consultant in development; design consultant; knowledge consultant; design consultant; management consultant; business adviser.
  
I didn't go on to the second page. I got the picture.
  
My only interest in social innovation arises from my experience as a consumer, parent and carer, and user of health, education, welfare, and a plethora of other services. When I heard Charlie Leadbeater speak in 2009 about the important areas for social innovation being precisely these areas of health, education, family, disability, and ageing (because these are the areas of serious state and market failure, and the areas of seemingly intractable social problems), and when he argued that the principal dynamic in social innovation is change that is centred on the user or consumer of services, I thought this sounded good. It accorded with my experience and my quest for changing things that need to be changed.
   
 
 If social innovators are, by definition, people from society, from all walks of life and users of all kinds of services, why is there a profile page of change-makers that consists entirely of people who work in the social innovation industry?
  
 
Something has gone askew here. What is it?
 
Vern Hughes