Material of the 10th Annual meeting of the OECD LEED Forum on Partnerships and Local Development |23-25 April 2014 | Stockholm, Sweden More info http://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/10th-fplg-meeting.htm

1. Professor Dr. Adalbert Evers
Social innovation for social cohesion. Challenges for mindsets
and institutional architectures
Input for
OECD LEED 10th Annual Meeting
Forum: Ecosystems for Social Innovations
Stockholm, 24-24 April 2014
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2. 1. background: The WILCO project
task: (a) Looking at innovations from twenty cities in ten EU-
countries (b) Looking for ways of taking up innovative nudges by
established systems
Social innovation: meant projects and practices that are seen
as “promising” while being path-breaking with respect to given
policies
Social cohesion: operationalized (a) with respect to young
people at risk, immigrants, lone mothers; (b) with respect to
housing/urban revitalization, labour-market and care services
Results: (a) cross-nationally recurrent approaches and
instruments have been found that make a difference; (b) welfare
system are open to various degrees, - from including innovative
“apps” over to attempts for mainstreaming
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3. 2. Innovations analyzed: What makes them
different
modes of organizing and financing mostly third
sector- based, but as well by inter-sectorial networks and intra-
preneurs/policy entrepreneurs
ways they design their services: trust- based rather
than control-based, group-building instead of singularizing
approaches, linking occupational goals with social support and
issues of local and community development
Ways of governance at place: cross-sector networking
with partners and stakeholders; looking for local embeddedness
Rights and benefits: new ways of activation and support
e.g. by ad-hoc microcredits, social contracts rewarding pro-social
attitudes
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4. 3. Observations on innovations and welfare
systems
openness to change and innovation varies much by policy
fields
SIs in need of “space” meet special difficulties in EU-
wide workfare culture marked by hierarchical, uniform
and closed services and systems
SIs get often supported just as “apps”, tools for filling
gaps in trouble zones
Casual emergence of “bridging” policies, that prepare
reforms not only by debate but as well by pilot-programs
that put innovative ideas and projects to a test
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5. 4. Routes to innovation-friendly ecosystems
Institutional and regulative reforms will not do it – innovation -
friendly systems need as well changes in concepts and mindsets
Need for welfare policies, that reduce the gap between dispersed
innovatory changes and central state policy interventions – e.g. by
devolution, pilot-programmes, by up-grading the impact of
„intrapreneurs“, by cross-sector-networks and hybrid organisations
A sole focus on obstacles by welfare traditionalism is misleading;
the impact of managerialism & privatization on chances of path-
changing innovations has to be counted in
Need for rebalancing the room to be given to diversity and to
central control and standard setting in welfare systems
Facit: „Social Innovation“ has yet to get a place in the vocabulary
of up-to-date public and welfare policies
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6. Thanks for your attention!
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7. Presentation based on already accessible results from the WILCO
research project, namely:
Evers/B.Ewert 2013:Social innovation for social cohesion. Findings
on communalities of innovation from a new transnational study.
Paper given at NESTA conference “Social Frontiers. The next edge of
social innovation research, London 14.-15.-11.-2013
http://www.nesta.org.uk/event/social-frontiers
B. Ewert/A. Evers 2014: Blueprints for the Future of Welfare
Provision? Shared features of Service Innovations across Europe, in:
Social Policy & Society Vol 13/3 (about to appear)
Evers/B. Ewert/T.Brandsen (eds.) 2014: Social innovations for social
cohesion – Transnational patterns and approaches from 20 European
cities (ed. with Benjamin Ewert and Taco Brandsen)
http://www.wilcoproject.eu/ereader-wilco/
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