People need spaces to experiment, to fail, to learn and to engage. Such experimental spaces (e.g. Fablabs, Hackerspaces, Ecovillages, Urban Living Labs) often operate with principles that are diametrically opposed to the dominant ways of thinking in mainstream media and education: learning from failure, mutual learning, and improvisation are preferred to short-term success, individualism, superficial solutions, and excessive planning. We need to challenge the thinking that dominates our education systems and public discourses to create more space for learning and experimentation.

Current economic systems are a source of many contemporary ecological and social challenges. People around the world are experimenting with alternative economies, including solidarity economy, social economy, social entrepreneurship, green economy, degrowth, sharing economy, circular economy, and many others. They collaborate in networks such as e.g. the Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy (RIPESS), the European Federation of Ethical and Alternative Banks (FEBEA), the International Co-operative Association (ICA) and Shareable. While there are considerable differences across alternative economy perspectives, they also share certain social and ecological values, a critique of capitalism and mainstream economic systems, and a commitment to changing existing power relations. We need to embrace the differences and complementarities of these alternative and diverse economies.

Social innovation often means re-discovering, re-inventing, re-using, re-vitalizing and translating forgotten, lost or abandoned ways of doing, thinking and organizing of the past. Innovation is just as much about new combinations of old things, as it is about integrating new things into existing contexts. Basic income, for instance, is an old idea which has inspired changes in tax and welfare systems. More recently, modern ICT and the innovative practice of crowdfunding are being put to creative use in circulating the idea and experimenting with it – turning a utopian concept into public engagement.

Social relations, e.g. between neighbours, consumers and producers, employers and employees, policy-makers and citizens, are fundamental to how we live our lives. It is not enough to change what we do and the tools we use: we need to address the deeper levels of how we relate to one another. Timebanking, for instance, replaces money-based transactions by a reciprocal service-exchange based on equality, reciprocity, and mutual help. There are no contracts between members, rather a relationship of trust. All services, however simple or sophisticated, are valued equally: the unit of exchange is the hours spent giving or receiving services. There are many other examples that promote such relational values of trust, reciprocity, equality, collectiveness, sharing, solidarity, inclusion and transparency. We commit to experiment with alternative relational values and practices, and to develop necessary group competences to build and maintain such relations.

Social innovation counter-balances a sole focus on the much celebrated technological innovations. Nevertheless ‘the social’ is not only shaped by human beings but also by mobile phones, computer viruses, climate change, genetically modified organisms, street signs, and so on. Technology, ecology, culture, economy and politics are all intertwined. We need initiatives that also tackle material, ecological and spatial matters when changing social relations and practices and that do so in a diversity of way. From e.g. Seed Exchange Networks (protecting biodiversity and defending seed freedom), La Via Campesina (fighting for the right to land and food sovereignty) and INFORSE (developing sustainable energy projects), to Slow Food (connecting food to local, sustainable development), the DESIS network (designing sustainable products and services), Fablabs and Hackerspaces (democratising the process of creating and making).

Changing relations between civil society, government and market are a form of social innovation in itself. Transformative social innovation involves multiple actors and institutions, and manifests in the changing interactions and blurring boundaries between them. Dominant institutions are not just about governments or big businesses; they also exist in civil society in our ingrained ways of doing, thinking and organizing. Social innovations are often born in civil society, but they also emerge from within businesses, universities (e.g. Science Shops) and governments. For instance, Participatory budgeting – the concept of citizens being involved in deciding how municipal budgets are spent – was initiated in Brazil by the mayor of Porto Alegre. All of us can be social innovators, as community activists or entrepreneurs, as researchers or policy-makers, or as any combination in between.

Social innovation should not replace the process of developing, maintaining or improving necessary public provisions. Even highly self-organized initiatives such as Ecovillages or Transition Towns need to draw intelligently and consciously upon public provisions. It is about sharing responsibility for the commons by challenging, changing and recombining public institutions so as to enable just and resilient living environments for all human beings. This includes responsibility for addressing unintended consequences of social innovation for public institutions. For instance, the notion of social entrepreneurship, as promoted by networks such as Ashoka or Impact Hub, may come with unintended consequences, such as social enterprises being (mis)used to legitimise the abolishment of public services or to eliminate subsidies for non-profit organisations. We need more explicit debates about these and other unintended consequences of social innovation.

Many social innovation networks are globally connected as well as locally rooted. Individuals are empowered by engaging with both local communities as well as international networks. We can’t have effective international networks without local rootedness in communities, and vice versa. Translocal networks can integrate the best of both the global and the local, connecting communities internationally and promoting global solidarity while also acknowledging and re-appreciating deep local identities and traditions. By doing so, they can respond to current political debates on globalisation, immigration and nationalism. Examples of translocal alternatives need to be made more visible in these public debates.

In addition to social-material needs (e.g. food, income, shelter), people seek for a sense of belonging (being connected to others), autonomy (acting in accordance with our own values) and competence (generating and experiencing skill and mastery). Social innovation initiatives that contribute to transformative change towards more sustainable, just and resilient societies, provide alternative ways for fulfilling these needs, thereby enhancing collective action and empowerment, and helping to overcome feelings of alienation, isolation or marginalization.

Social innovation initiatives apply innovative decision-making methods like multiple form of democracy (e.g. liquid, deep and deliberate democracy or ‘do-ocracy’), systemic consensus, sociocracy or holacracy. Such practices require shared ownership structures and a culture of open, transparent communication. Participatory decision-making depends on mature and socially competent individuals who are willing and able to take responsibility, to see the bigger picture and to be self-reflective and constructive in conflict situations. As such, social innovation requires space for social learning, capacity-building, and personal development. All this also means that well-established and functioning democratic institutions are a necessary precondition for transformative social innovation to flourish. This implies that in parallel to the experimentation with alternative democratic approaches, there is also a challenge to fight for basic democratic institutions in diverse ‘non-democratic’ geographical and socio-political contexts.

Alternative narratives and theories of change are a pivotal driving force behind physical change: they serve to communicate and clarify why the world has to change, who has the power to do so and how this can be done. These narratives are not just about story-telling, as they also inform and direct physical action: how new houses are built, pieces of land are transformed, community-gardens are set-up, start-ups are born, products are made, new subsidy schemes are set up, and so on. Initiatives have different narratives, ranging from lifestyle change and inner transformation, to changing economic models and redesigning products, to political activism and fundamental institutional change. We appreciate the diversity and complementarities across different narratives of change, while also recognising commonalities in a commitment to relational values, community building and empowerment.

There are many commonalities that can be found across different networks and initiatives working on social change. However, a lot of complementarities still remain underexplored. Specific approaches to social change are often promoted at the cost of others, instead of stressing their complementarities and collaborating in a collective effort. Initiatives are often forced to focus on their own strengths, choose their own battles, and fight over scarce resources in order to survive. Some interesting network collaborations have already been started to tackle these challenges, as can for instance be seen in the case of ECOLISE, the European Network for Community-led Initiatives on Climate Change and Sustainability, which brings together networks such as Transition Towns, the Global Ecovillage Network and several other organisations. We need more of these kind of meta-networks and spaces for encounter and reflection, including constructive confrontation and debate.

Social innovation initiatives often strive to be inclusive and accessible, and tend to be critical of the exclusive character of the dominant institutions that they aim to replace. However, there is an inherent paradox of inclusivity and exclusivity in social innovation, which often starts small from a limited group of like-minded people. Even the most committed social innovators at times struggle to overcome deep divides in highly structured modern societies. In order to be transformative, we need to overcome cultural and social-political barriers and connect beyond the original context where we started out. To that end, we need to link to other movements that confront divisions in class, gender, culture, sexual orientation, and (dis)ability, so not only to be aware of the dynamics of exclusivity, but also to deal with them. In order to make social innovation more inclusive and accessible and in order to have transformative impact, innovation must go through some sort of mainstreaming process. During such mainstreaming, social innovation - by definition - loses some of its innovative characteristics and runs the risk of being captured by existing structures and interests. This paradox is inherent to all innovation. We need to have a portfolio of different and often paradoxical strategies, including resisting, protesting, disproving, demanding, lobbying and disobeying, but also supplementing, compromising, complementing, circumventing, improving, collaborating, seducing and surprising. These strategies need to be flexible, continuously adapting, updating and repositioning, so as to translate values and practices to a more mainstream context, while at the same time allowing us to hold on to our original core intentions.