Social Innovation

The capture of the social innovation agenda in Australia by a public sector managerial class has been excruciating to observe. While social innovation in other countries has been a multi-stakeholder process oriented to comprensive and holistic societal innovation, in Australia it has been captured, funded, and distorted by a public sector managerial class divorced from civil society.  How has this happened and what can be done about it?

Last year I got "Building Social Business" by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus. I knew him as an economist and Founder of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh. But after reading this, I got more interest on his writing. During the recent NE Book Fair I purchased his Biography and now searching "Creating a World Without Poor"

Geoff Mulgan is the CEO of NESTA in the UK (National Endowment on the Sciences, Technology and the Arts). Geoff's newest and preferred definition of social innovation is "innovation which is social in both its goals and its means".

I like this formulation. It requires social means (relationships, exchanges, coalitions, transfers of information and power) between social actors (organisations, individuals, governments) to achieve social goals (social well-being and social change).