The temptation may be to imagine that social innovation happens somewhere else and on a different scale to one local leaders can influence.  Surely it involves the cleverest people, working with the most resources in the most ‘strategic’ environments?  The evidence, however, suggests most social innovation starts local and is influenced by local leaders.

In Birmingham, for example, social changes have had local roots:

• the Council was set up because local residents petitioned Parliament for one. Within 40 years, the city – described as the best governed in the world – was the fastest growing city in the British Empire
• the first factory in the world to use assembly line production was built in Soho by James Watt and Matthew Boulton and a hundred years later, George Cadbury welcomed the King to the first garden cities conference at his factory in Bournville
• building societies were invented in Birmingham by a group of people gathering at Ketley’s public house at Snow Hill. Even after ten building societies demutualised in the 1990s, building societies today still lend more than £250bn to enable British households to buy housing.
• the modern postal system – based on the idea of stamps bought by the sender – was invented by Edgbaston schoolteacher Rowland Hill who worked at the Assay Office on Newhall Street in Birmingham
• Gas lighting was invented by William Murdoch who worked in Handsworth. Within 75 years, the proceeds of Birmingham’s municipal gas company had paid for the building of Gas Hall on Chamberlain Square
• The Birmingham Political Union – set up by local residents – was instrumental in forcing the government to pass the reforms which made the basis for modern Parliamentary democracy.