How exactly do social innovations contribute to EU Mission-oriented innovation policy? That is the question at the heart of a newly published report from the Social Innovation Mission Facility (SIMF) project, developed by DRIFT together with TU Dortmund and ZSI (Deliverable 1.2).
The report answers two key questions. First, how well is social innovation currently integrated across the EU Missions, and how can this be done more effectively? Second, what are the impact pathways through which social innovations contribute to Mission objectives?
Uneven integration, clear opportunities
The analysis shows that social innovation is unevenly included across the different stages of the Missions programming cycle, and across the five Missions themselves. Tagging EU topics as calling for social innovation is neither necessary nor sufficient on its own to stimulate it. Unlocking its potential requires pairing SI-tagging with a supportive implementation structure, something the Cities Mission has made substantial progress on through its substantively funded implementation platform.
The report also finds that social innovation tends to concentrate on stimulating engagement and collaboration among diverse actors. While that is valuable, it underleverages social innovation’s transformative role in other domains, such as how society relates to its natural and built environment, or to systems of production, consumption and value creation. Cascade funding, which gives smaller-scale actors access to project funding, emerges as a strong enabling condition worth building on further.
Based on these findings, the report offers concrete suggestions across three areas: embedding social innovation more systematically in programming and project selection, developing long-term funding and collaboration ecosystems for implementation, and building monitoring frameworks that link short-term outputs to longer-term societal impact.
Nine pathways to impact
The report also traces nine key pathway types through which social innovations contribute to Mission objectives, grouped into three domains. In the governance and institutional domain, this includes actor engagement, knowledge co-production, monitoring and awareness change. In the socio-economic domain, it covers new business models, financing mechanisms, service ecosystems and livelihood and wellbeing. In the socio-material domain, it covers the planning of cities and regions and the (re)structuring of the built and natural environment.Together, these pathways offer policymakers, funders, social innovators and support organisations a map of where social innovation is already being harnessed, where it holds untapped potential, and where future investment could be directed
