Why a big-picture approach holds the key to social innovation

Under the scaling perspective, social transformation is seen as a byproduct of the institutionalisation and diffusion of social innovations. Previous research has shown how scaling often operates through an S-shaped curve in which innovation is initially slow to diffuse owing to obstacles and delays, followed by successful initiatives marked by rapid adoption through momentum, and then a slowdown through saturation when the innovation is broadly accepted.

It is widely assumed that social impact will follow the diffusion and institutionalisation of social innovation practices, and this sometimes holds true. For example, the spread of mobile phone technology throughout the world, including to places previously lacking landlines, addressed grand challenges associated with lack of connectivity in remote communities and no access to banking for people in both cities and rural settings. Such newfound connectivity now helps protect rural farmers, through far greater access to information, from exploitation by agricultural intermediaries.

Yet as outlined in a 2019 study that focused on microfinance in Bangladesh, it doesn’t always work that way. Microfinance is widely assumed to be a tool to enable people who lack access to traditional bank loans and other financial services to lift themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship, but the study showed that societal norms can frustrate such promise. The study focused on a Bangladeshi woman, Latifa, abandoned by her husband, who sought with the assistance of microfinance to set up a self-employed business doing tasks like filling road holes and carrying bricks. But her requests were routinely denied by microfinance officers on grounds that such work is traditionally done by men, so funding a woman to do these activities through self-employment would be disrespectful of the custom of purdah, or the segregating of males and females in Bangladeshi society.

This example shows the limitations of the scaling perspective. “Even when institutionalised and diffused across multiple communities and countries, microfinance operates within the entrenched norms and systems (such as respect for purdah customs) that perpetuate the marginalisation of women like Latifa, leaving them trapped at the bottom of the income pyramid,” says Helen and her co-authors.

The historical perspective on how social innovation can be transformational examines the dynamics of narratives, or the role played by stories that reflect and are shaped by communities, cultural norms, emotions and personal relationships. 

“We argue that narratives offer another path to 2 views of the Enlightenment that have long been seen as problematic by humanists – universal rationality and intentionality, by recognising lived experience as a key motivational factor in social innovation and to look beyond intentionality to examine how social innovation has an impact,” says Helen.  

In a separate chapter in the book, Helen employs a history-focused perspective through the lens of property rights regime changes over time, particularly the interplay between micro-level action and its macro-level context. While the dominant narrative in western societies has been the protection of private property rights, the study shows how property rights regime change can influence business model social innovation to have beneficial community impacts. 

Helen examines how, over many decades, the community of Lewis, an island in northwest Scotland’s windswept Outer Hebrides, developed a social innovation business model to help manage land ownership through such changes in property rights. After a wealthy property owner gifted a huge estate (68,000 acres) to the local community in 1923, a trust was established that shifted the land from private ownership to a common property regime owned by the community, but the traditional business model based on tenant rental income was initially retained. The trust then diversified during World War II, leasing land to the British military and supporting sports activities, and a social business model then emerged after the war to use the land to promote tourism and agriculture while boosting educational and housing opportunities for the island communities. 

“The story of the establishment and management of the land trust illustrates the interconnection between the microhistory of the trust and macro events including World War II, and the impact this had on social transformation,” says Helen. “In 1923, when the trust was created, 98% of income from the land was derived from rents and related fees, but by 1960 that declined to 62% of trust income as other income sources such as from field sports and returns on investments increased. “Here we can see through an historical perspective how a change in property rights regime led to diversification of income sources that strengthened the trust’s financial sustainability and also its organisational governance in a way that supports housing development, skills acquisition and other opportunities for the islanders.” 

Yet the broader research by Helen also explores how narratives (regardless of veracity) can set back social innovation. Another chapter in the book explains how efforts beginning in the 1960s to tackle homelessness in the US, for example, ran up against a culture of poverty narrative that, in some people’s eyes, dismissed the  problem because it was assumed that homeless people were complicit in their fate and thus not deserving of full societal support. “This is in contrast with alternative views that identify factors such as limited welfare services for people with mental illness, or lack of sufficient housing, as the relevant facts when thinking about homelessness,” says the research. 

The systems perspective focuses on how transformational change can emerge from adaptive change in the interconnections across systems that form the foundation for the grand challenges we face.

The authors reflect that “unlike scaling, which frames transformation as a byproduct of social innovation’s acceptance and spread, or narratives, which focus on cultural and emotional shifts, adaptive change underscores the unpredictability inherent in system complexity and its role in mediating efforts to address grand challenges,.

To illustrate such unpredictability, Helen highlights how well-intentioned efforts by ecologists to protect natural habitats by prohibiting controlled fires have often had unforeseen negative effects, because such controlled blazes can sustain indigenous plant life and slow the spread of alien species, thus lowering the severity of fires that may occur. Likewise, an initiative in El Salvador to donate shoes for every pair sold disrupted local markets and had an unexpectedly negative effect on local communities it was designed to help.