Social Innovation

The paradigm of innovation has evolved considerably in recent decades. The literature on innovation has historically focused on studying technological innovations and economic innovation with the development of capitalist societies. In the social sciences, more research has been done in recent years to better understand innovation and to include a social innovation approach. This research has brought social innovation not only into the discussion on innovation studies, but also into the discussion on social inequality, where social innovation is presented as a tool for the distribution of power and social justice. This chapter suggests that social innovation does not always occur as a radical change, but as a change in everyday practices; these changes are crucial to create new mindsets of how to solve problems, how to collaborate with different actors or create new ways of distributing power in society. This chapter explains different dimensions, concepts and fields of social innovation to provide an overview of the concept. It also show the main dimensions of study of this concept and its application in specific fields such as education and sustainability. This chapter presents different regional perspectives of social innovation. The main contribution of this chapter is the detailed explanation of the different concepts and their dimensions and their contribution to social inequality.