Social Innovator Series: Ways to design, develop and grow social innovation.

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?

If we are going to tackle the intractable challenges - 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, sought 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 resulted in three reports that make up the Social Innovator Series:

• The Open Boook of Social Innovation (March 2010) is about the many ways in which people are creating new and more effective answers to the biggest challenges of our times.  It describes the methods and tools for innovation being used across the world and across the different sectors - the public and private sectors, civil society and the household - and in the overlapping fields of the social economy, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise. It draws on inputs from hundreds of organisations around the world to document the many methods currently being used.

• Danger and Opportunity (September 2009) argues that the most recent economic crisis, and the increased emphasis on social innovation are both merging to create a new social economy that will change the landscape of society in decades to come.

• Social Venturing (July 2009) focuses on how to establish and grow a social venture, looking at the landscape of entrepreneurs and campaigners, organisations and movements - in the UK and internationally - that is making social innovation actually happen.

The work also produced the website Social Innovator: ways to develop, design and grow social innovation.