With Module 2, we shift focus away from the more abstract and conceptual aspects of social innovation theory toward the practical field to survey the methodologies that support the work of social innovation practitioners. After developing an understanding of effective partnership work, we’ll leverage real life examples to capture the fundamentals of social entrepreneurship, social enterprise and social finance and wrap up with a primer on evaluation for impact in the social innovation field.

Unit 5: Power and Partnership in Collaborative Work

The common approach to collaboration focuses on getting agreement on:

1. What is our common purpose?
2. What is the problem?
3. What is the solution to the problem?
4. What is the plan to execute the solution?
5. Who needs to do what to execute the plan?

The common approach however does not apply in to collaborations in which agreement is not easy to achieve, as is the case in most situation where the perspectives of those involved are diverse and the collaboration pertains to a complex issue.

In these context, stretch collaboration is a better approach (ref: Kahane):

1. Accept the plurality of the situation: You do not have to agree on what the solution is – or even what the problem is – to make progress. Different actors may support the same outcome for different reasons.
2. Experiment to find a way forward: Keep trying things with the understanding that you can’t control the future, but you can influence it. Success isn’t coming up with a solution – it’s working toward one.
3. See yourself as part of the problem, not outside it: You can’t make progress until you realize that you have a role in the situation. If you don’t see that you are part of the problem, you can’t be part of the solution.

For more on collaboration, see Tamarak’s Collaboration Spectrum webinar and article.

Collaboration around social innovation requires cross-sectoral partnerships and work with people and organizations who may have more or less power and resources than ourselves. Ensuring that initiatives are creative, coherent and integrated enough to tackle the most stuck problems requires comprehensive and widespread cross-sector collaboration.

In a social innovation context, the lack of connectivity across sector different sectors often leads to competition, duplication of efforts and waste of resources which, in turn, might mean getting stuck in cycles of blame.

The Partnership Brokers Association proposes core principles to mitigate challenges to cross-sectoral collaboration:

1. Power imbalances shift to Equity because it leads to respect
2. Hidden agendas shift to Transparency because it leads to trust
3. Winning at any cost shifts to Mutual Benefit because it leads to engagement and the ability to sustain efforts over time.

Helpful Resources

1. “How to collaborate when you don’t have consensus” by Adam Kahane, in Strategy and Business, April 3, 2018.

Unit 6: My Role in a Complex System

A system enabler:

• has the capacity to shift their focus and engage with the system as a whole, not just one level or sector.
• Is aware and tolerant of the cyclical nature of innovation.
• Recognizes that achieving system-wide impact involves managing for emergence by paying careful attention to possibilities as they open across social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes, and nurturing resource and action networks.

In life, systems change never happens as a result of top-down, pre-conceived strategic plans, or through the mandate of any single individual or organisation. Change begins as local actions spring up simultaneously in many different areas. If these changes remain disconnected, nothing happens beyond what is happening locally. Connectivity is key to local actions’ capacity to cohere into a powerful system with influence at a more global or comprehensive level. This phenomenon is called emergence.

Emergent phenomenon:

• Exert more power than the sum of their parts.
• Have capacities different from those of the local actions that engendered them.
• Are often unexpected appearance.

The panarchy framework connects adaptive cycles in a nested hierarchy. There are potentially multiple connections between phases of the adaptive cycle at one level and phases at another level.

Helpful Resources

1. Case Study: “From Total Innovation to Systems Change – The Case of the Registered Disability Savings Plan,”, F. Westley, N. Antadze, University of Waterloo.
2. Video: https://vimeo.com/55472020

Unit 7: Introduction to Social Enterprise and Social Finance

Organizations can adopt different approaches when it comes to their business model or the way they fund initiatives, or parts of their operations. To make sense of the options available to those who work in the social purpose sector, it makes sense to become familiar with what is involved in social enterprise and social finance.

Social enterprise and social finance tools and mechanisms are adaptations of models that have existed in the business community for a long time. While they are not new, they are newly deployed to the social sector. They are a form of bricolage: they make creative use of the assets and resources at one’s disposal.

Social enterprises are revenue-generating businesses with a twist. While they may be operated by a non-profit organization or by a for-profit company, a social enterprise has two distinctive goals:

1. To achieve social, cultural, community economic and/or environmental outcomes (its mission);
2. To earn revenue.

A social enterprise’s mission is its main purpose, and the income generation plays a supporting role.

B Corporations balance purpose and profit. B Corporations must meet/exceed a list of criteria which and certification is issued by an organisation called the B Lab.

Social finance refers to initiatives designed to support the financing of social purpose organisation and entrepreneurs by leveraging existing capital to attract new investments for project that benefit the public good. Examples of social finance include: community investing, microlending, sustainable business, social enterprise lending, and impact investing.

There are many ways to contribute to the work of positive change that can be placed on a continuum.

Figure 7.1 Social and Financial Return Continuum.

Social innovation is most likely to succeed through a combination of approaches.

Helpful Resources

1. Social Enterprise Ontario: Stories
2. “What is Impact Investing?,” PYMWYMIC, 2019

Unit 8: Evaluating Change Efforts

Deliberate and Emergent Strategies

Innovation actors need to be ready to take advantage of what has emerged. The ability to embrace emergence consists in navigating the balance between maintaining a course of action that is good enough while taking advantage of opportunities as they appear.

Being deliberate about planning – setting intention, planning a course, determining what is needed to get there, and what actions to take – is good practice. But recognizing that only so much can be controlled in human systems is also important.

Data from evaluation is needed to let funders know about the progress an initiative is making, inform community members about the way your programs are being experienced, and can help a board of directors better support members of the team.

Developmental evaluation is particularly suited in the early stages of social innovation, radical program redesign, complex issues, and crises. It helps with framing concepts, the rapid testing of iterations, and with tracking developments and surfacing issues.

Developmental evaluation is a process that allows innovation actors to interpret intent and to explain and explore a course in order to pursue it. It also serves to articulate simple, elegant, straightforward and honest narratives to make sense of exploration and experimentation.

Formative evaluation is useful to determined if things aren’t working and an initiative needs to pivot, or to identify areas of effectiveness in which additional investment would be judicious. It may take the form of pre-program surveys, to establish a baseline. In a formative evaluation, data is gathered to assess the effectiveness of a initiative and guide decisions on what to adopt and how to improve it.

A summative evaluation is an assessment that focuses on outcomes and usually requires the priori definition of a set of criteria or goals.

In the context of evaluation practices, the distinction between outputs and outcome is important. Outputs are “countables” that can be determined on the basis of survey answers, sales statistics, website traffic, or participants numbers. Outcomes and impact are the changes the program is expected to create, and can be determined on the of data collected, for instance, through self-assessment or focus groups.

A theory of change is a representation the way in which a particular initiative will be effective, and is designed to describe how change is meant to happen in the short, medium and long term in order to achieve the intended impact. It can take the form of a visual diagram, a narrative, or both. A theory of change will typically make use of all three kinds of evaluations, and include projections of outputs and outcomes.

Helpful Resources

1.  “How to Build a Theory of Change,” No Author, NCVO, No Date
2.  “What is Developmental Evaluation?,” PFC Social Impact Advisors, 201