Social Innovation

Overview

Key Features

Social innovation – or the development of new ideas, services and models to better address social issues – is a concept that has become known world-wide over the last couple of decades. Social innovation often involves the empowerment of disadvantaged groups and the restructuring of power relations in the ways they are implemented. Social innovation often emerges from civil society to disrupt or pose an alternative to the status quo, such as in the form of microfinance initiatives or social enterprises, and can imply new forms of collaboration that encourage new and less hierarchical relationships between government, civil society and citizens.

Those encouraging, facilitating and delivering social innovation, whether in the private, public or third sectors, are looking for the right mix of critical, intellectually curious and entrepreneurial scholars and practitioners who are armed with the knowledge and mindset needed to tackle some of the world's most pressing problems. The Social Innovation programme is offered by Glasgow Caledonian University .