Despite growing interest in the field of social and public innovation in the UK, Europe and globally, there remains uncertainty about which methods and approaches the field should use. Many methods are currently in use - each with advocates and practitioners. However, it remains a matter of chance which methods are used for which purposes and no-one so far has taken any serious overview of methods - which ones work best; which are most effective or appropriate for different tasks?

Recently, in the DIUS White Paper, the ‘Innovation Nation', the government reaffirmed the importance of public service innovation in meeting the economic and social challenges of the 21st century. If we are going to tackle these intractables - climate change, ageing, congestion or youth disengagement - we need to have a better understanding of which methods we have at our disposal and which ones work best in different contexts.

This project, funded and in partnership with NESTA seeks to survey, synthesise and distil the state of knowledge about methods in the field, drawing on practitioners and researchers in the UK and internationally. It will collect what evidence there is on the effectiveness of various methods.

The project will explore the following areas:

• Setting the conditions for social innovation
• The process of social innovation
• Transformative innovations

How to Innovate:The tools for social innovation

This paper provides a first output from this study on the methods being used to generate and grow social innovation around the world.