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Social innovation is about creating new solutions to address social and environmental challenges in a more effective and sustainable way. Across Europe, projects are developing practical approaches to improve quality of life, strengthen communities, and create inclusive growth.
Socialinterreg.eu brings together real projects, results, and tools from Interreg programmes. It helps you understand what has already been done, connect with relevant actors, and build new initiatives based on proven approaches.
Social Innovation
What is social innovation?
Social innovation means developing new ideas, services, products, processes or organisational models that meet a social need better than the alternatives that already exist. It has a dual purpose: creating new social practices and improving societal well-being.
The OECD describes it as the search for new answers to social and societal problems, aimed primarily at improving people’s quality of life through greater well-being and social and economic inclusion.
How is it different from "normal" innovation?
Conventional innovation is usually measured by economic gain: market share, growth, profit. Social innovation is measured by societal value. The benefit accrues to society as a whole rather than to a single private entity, and the solution is expected to be more effective, efficient, sustainable or fairer than what came before.
That does not make it anti-commercial. Many social innovations use market mechanisms, they simply put purpose ahead of profit as the reason for existing.
Who produces social innovation?
All four sectors, often in combination:
- Public sector — municipalities, agencies, public service providers
- Private sector — businesses of any size, including mainstream SMEs
- Civil society — associations, NGOs, informal citizen initiatives
- Social economy — cooperatives, mutuals, foundations, social enterprises
This is precisely why social innovation is hard to slot into conventional innovation policy: it does not belong to one sector, and it often emerges between them.
Social Entrepreneurship
What is social entrepreneurship?
Social entrepreneurship applies entrepreneurial principles — building and running a venture, managing risk, developing a business model, to social problems. The driver is social change rather than financial return, although the venture must still be financially viable.
Can you give a concrete example?
Viva con Agua
As a social innovation, it found new ways to raise money and awareness for water scarcity, concerts, art shows and cultural events instead of conventional fundraising appeals.
As a social enterprise, it sells bottled mineral water and channels the proceeds into clean water projects. The social purpose is embedded in the business model rather than financed out of leftover profit.
How do Social Innovation and -Entrepreneurship relate to each other?
Social entrepreneurship is one way of doing social innovation, not a synonym for it. Social innovation is the broader field of new solutions to social needs; social entrepreneurship is the venture-based route to delivering them.
Social entrepreneurship is usually described through three overlapping dimensions:
- Entrepreneurial dimension — a viable venture with a business model
- Societal dimension — a clear social or environmental mission
- Governance dimension — transparent, participatory, mission-locked governance
A social enterprise sits where all three overlap.
Social Innovation Ecosystems
What is a social innovation ecosystem?
The dynamic, mutually reinforcing set of interactions between social innovators and their surrounding stakeholders: public authorities, civil society, academia, the social economy and the private sector, plus the infrastructure, financing and rules that shape those interactions.
The point of the ecosystem concept is that no single organisation supplies everything a social innovator needs, and no single organisation can solve a societal problem at scale.
What does a well-functioning ecosystem contain?
Talents — connecting people to social enterprises: awareness of societal challenges, social entrepreneurial training, and schools and universities offering SE as a visible career path.
Market & Impact — access to impact-oriented markets so that social innovations can secure long-term funding, whether through conventional market channels or sponsorship. Visibility and cross-sector collaboration are decisive here.
Support — the monetary and non-monetary infrastructure: advisory services, training, finance, and access to resources such as office space, provided by public funders, foundations, incubators and accelerators.
A resilient ecosystem is one where these three areas are genuinely interconnected, not three parallel silos.
What is a CSEI, and how does it relate to all this?
A Cluster of Social and Ecological Innovation is a concept developed and promoted by the European Commission’s GECES working group, and the organising framework used by the RESIST project.
Like a conventional cluster, a CSEI strengthens collaboration among stakeholders and builds a supportive innovation ecosystem in a place. Three things set it apart:
- It is cross-sectoral, not tied to one branch or industry.
- It uses a quadruple or quintuple helix model that includes civil society.
- Its aim is solving societal and ecological challenges, not primarily boosting regional competitiveness.