Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 51, No. 1, 2010 139

Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.











The social innovation process: themes, challenges
and implications for practice
Fiona Lettice*
Norwich Business School,
University of East Anglia,
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, England, UK
E-mail: fiona.lettice@uea.ac.uk
*Corresponding author
Menka Parekh
The Hub,
5 Torrens Street, London,
EC1V 1NQ, UK
E-mail: menka.parekh@the-hub.net
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to better understand the process of
social innovation, as well as exploring what lessons can be transferred from
general business innovation theory and practice. We have conducted interviews
with ten innovators in the UK who have each taken an unusual approach to a
social or environmental problem and created solutions that were initially seen
as peripheral and unlikely to work. The interviews were transcribed, coded and
analysed to identify recurring patterns in the data. The innovations researched
have diverse social benefits and outcomes, ranging from creating employment
for the homeless through to designing electric sports cars. The data revealed
four themes: changing the lens, building missing links, engaging a new
‘customer’ base, and leveraging peer-support. We also identified techniques to
address the problems associated with each theme, including scanning the
periphery, taking a reflective and systemic approach, identifying niche
segments and joining or creating networks.
Keywords: social innovation; social enterprise; disruptive innovation;
networks; information asymmetry.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Lettice, F. and Parekh, M.
(2010) ‘The social innovation process: themes, challenges and implications for
practice’, Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp.139–158.
Biographical notes: Fiona Lettice is a Senior Lecturer in the Norwich
Business School at the University of East Anglia, UK. She is also a Visiting
Research Fellow at Cranfield University. The main focus of her research is in
innovation management. She has led a number of research grants, with funding
from the European Commission, UK Engineering and Physical Science
Research Council (EPSRC) and Economic and Social Science Research
Council (ESRC) in the areas of discontinuous innovation, knowledge
management and innovation, performance management, and innovation in
regional clusters.

140 F. Lettice and M. Parekh













Menka Parekh is a Strategy and Innovation Consultant for sustainable
development, working with business, government, multi-laterals, NGOs and
grassroots organisations. She is a Director of The Hub, which is a global
incubator for social and environmental initiatives – ranging from micro
generation to ethical fashion. Her focus is on the re-imagination of what are
possible, using tools and processes such as research, scenarios, creative
collisions, blended value models, user-led design and rapid prototyping. She is
a writer and speaker for the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development, University of Bath School of Management, The Guardian, and
keeps a blog at www.whatsbubbling.com.

1 Introduction
There is an urgent need to do things differently – whether to reverse climate change,
create more inclusive societies, or alleviate poverty. In response, social innovation is a
rapidly growing practice and an emerging academic discipline. However, a search for
articles explicitly using this term does not yield many research papers. We did find
that related topics, such as sustainable development, sustainable innovation and
eco-innovation are covered by more papers, but they contain relatively new and immature
areas of research, with varying and developing language, descriptions and definitions
being used. One definition of social innovation is the development and implementation of
new ideas (products, services and models) to meet social needs (Mulgan et al., 2007b).
This description is quite broad and so can incorporate other sub-fields, such as
sustainable innovation and eco-innovation, which are trying to solve the social problems
that are associated with depleting natural resources, the loss of biodiversity, and a
changing climate. As such, social innovations can be referred to as part of sustainable
development, in response to the view that economic activity has expanded “with little or
no regard for sustainable yields or the fragile balances in nature” [Brown, (2002), p.24].
Increasingly, private firms, public organisations and community groups are becoming
aware of their responsibility and role in solving social problems that have not been solved
by traditional approaches. There has also been a substantial growth in organisations that
purposefully address a social problem through enterprise. According to figures from the
UK Government’s Annual Small Business Survey (Atkinson et al., 2006) and existing
data for the social enterprise sector, there are at least 55,000 social enterprises in the UK
with a combined turnover of £27 billion per year. Social enterprises account for 5% of all
businesses with employees and contribute £8.4billion per year to the UK economy, which
is almost 1% of annual GDP (http://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/, accessed 29/12/07).
Though Spear’s (2006) study found a limited degree of innovation in the cases of social
entrepreneurship that he looked at, it is clear that a handful of other social entrepreneurs
are leading very promising social innovations (Willis et al., 2007). In this paper, we focus
on social innovations, which are defined as new products, services and models that have
been developed to meet social needs (after Mulgan et al., 2007b). We are less interested
in the sector, or organisational form from which they have emerged. Hence, we also use
the term social innovators to mean people with ideas that meet social needs in all sectors
including the entrepreneurial sector, corporate settings, the public sector, NGOs and
multi-laterals.