Presentation to Social Frontiers by Joanne McNeil

1. Enabling social innovation – opportunities for
sustainable local and regional development
Joanne McNeill
University of Western Sydney

2. study aims
• to position as economic
• to open up discussion
• to assist with positioning

3. a ‘language politics’

4. typology elements - summary
• social relations (process)
– ‘ways of organising’
• social needs (outcomes)
– diverse economic agents & processes
– social markets dimensions
• through case examples – contribution to
sustainable local & regional development

5. diverse
economies
‘iceberg’
J.K. Gibson-Graham
Available at:
http://www.communityec
onomies.org/Home/KeyIdeas

6. diverse economic agents & processes
• Labour: secondments, student participation, work for welfare, inkind, volunteer, self-provisioning
• Transactions: equal partner collaborations, social procurement,
shared back-room-services arrangements, local currencies, barter,
household sharing, gleaning
• Property: publicly owned hard assets, publicly owned ‘soft’ assets
(eg. data sets), nonprofit organisation assets, community land
trusts, open-source intellectual property, creative commons
• Enterprise: public-sector owned enterprises, social businesses,
employee owned enterprises, community owned enterprises,
cooperatives, social enterprises, nonprofits
• Finance: social investment products, community bonds,
microfinance, interest free loans, grants, crowd-funding

7. social market dimensions
• new or improved product or service
• new or improved method of production or
service delivery
• new market or new entrant to an existing market
• new source of supply or supply chain
• new model (more efficient or effective
organisation of a sector)
Based on Schumpeter

8. two ‘user’ groups
public sector officers - local, state, federal
• variety of roles, but all with some ‘place’ focus
• prior involvement in social innovation activity
residents and enterprises connected to a specific ‘place’
• community groups, community service
organisations, social enterprises & residents, some

9. user input to typology design
and feedback on
social innovation concepts