One of the primary objectives of the CrESSI research programme is to explore how public policy might better cultivate social innovation to enhance the lives of the most marginalised EU citizens. With this in mind, CrESSI members have sought to establish the current status of social innovation policy at the EU level and across individual member states. A scoping of individual member states’ policy agendas has been undertaken to both contextualise EU level policy and provide an initial mapping of the EU social innovation policy eco-system.
Based on this research, a series of working papers has recently been published that details the differing ways in which social innovation is conceptualised and supported across Europe. The key policy discourses, trends and operational strategies surrounding social innovation have been examined in Finland, Germany, Hungary,Italy and the UK. A working paper detailing EU-level social innovation policy has also been published. In addition, an executive summary of the research findings is available.
Despite its transformative potential and ideals, the research suggests that social innovation only tends to be recognised and supported by public authorities in a manner that does not jolt too strongly with the existing socio-economic and political settlement. This comes some way to explain how domestic policy agendas have developed to conceive of and support social innovation in distinctive ways.
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