The politics of conceptualizing social innovation

In this chapter we examine the different conceptualizations of social innovation that are commonly in use within academic and practitioner discourse today. Explaining how most definitions of social innovation tend to ignore that social change is a political process, we explore how the different conceptualizations denote different political positions. We draw on the concept of Strategic Action Fields to reveal how social innovation can be considered as an arena of contestation over which direction social change ought to occur. We put forward a future research agenda focused on revealing the power, politics, and contestation dynamics within social innovation processes.