Social Innovation means changing the way resources are used, managed or combined so as to produce greater social benefit.  In practice it can mean ‘different people doing different things in different ways to make better places to live’. It’s the idea of social profit which defines social innovation and distinguishes it from business innovation.

Digital technology can provide tools for social innovators, but it does not define it: social innovation is to do with people working together to make things work better in new ways, not necessarily using digital technology.

 

The resources involved in social innovation include public assets – land and buildings – and the skills of public sector workers and managers. Social innovation can involve bringing together assets owned by public, private and voluntary sector organisations or by wider civil society.  Or it may be that public assets are better managed by civil society. Birmingham’s Community Asset Transfer (CAT) policy, for example, sets out an objective basis for transferring leasehold ownership of assets to community organisations.  In Birmingham, the decision to transfer the leasehold on a public asset to a community group for a reduced sum is based on an assessment of social value added (social profit) by the transfer.

 

Social innovation is about using assets creatively, not necessarily transferring them. In the Sparkbrook & Balsall Heath ward in Birmingham, for example, the ward strategic partnership doesn’t affect the ownership of the housing stock, open spaces and other land and buildings in the ward. It does, however, enable councillors to work with representatives of organisations with an interest in the area to spot, and develop, shared opportunities for using their assets more productively.

 

Where Next?

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Community Asset Transfer in Birmingham

‘How Places Got Their Public Services’

Why does Social Innovation matter?

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