Learning for Change: Social innovation and Hybridity

Dr. Philip Marcel Karré is a senior researcher at Inholland University of Applied Sciences, lecturer at the Erasmus University Rotterdam & coordinator for the Knowledge Lab Urban Liveability.

In this session, we took several of the lessons of the upcoming Transit manifesto by heart and adopted a more critical yet constructive view on social innovation. We mainly discussed three points:

1. In the public debate, social innovation is often misrepresented as an a-political and a-historic phenomenon in which naively idealistic citizens take on social challenges all by themselves. Some even go as far as calling traditional institutions (governments, the market) outdated or obsolete. But in practice, they are anything but. We need all three ‘governance modes’ (state, market and civil society) to succeed with social innovation. Civil society arguably is on the rise in recent years but nowhere near as important yet as the other two.

2. A second misconception is that social innovation is a-political. It isn’t and shouldn’t be. Social innovation addresses so-called wicked problems. Wicked problems are wicked because they do not have a one best solution that you can calculate to be demonstratively better than all other solutions. Political choices (value choices) are needed and cooperation between state, market and civil society.

3. We have to take in mind though that each of these parties has its own logics which often contradict one another. Social innovation asks us to combine these conflicting logics nevertheless. This hybridity produces tensions which can lead to innovation and synergy. But it can also produce ambiguity, conflicts over values and legitimacy issues. Hybridity is a double-edged sword and we should be well aware of its benefits and risks in processes of social innovation.