Social innovation as an ecosystem

The 2008 paper by Phills, Deiglmeier and Miller, “Rediscovering Social Innovation” (Stanford Social Innovation Review), placed the concept on new foundations: it defined social innovation as an interdisciplinary ecosystem. This article briefly summarises what this perspective means and why it came to influence later innovation policies.

1. Innovation is not the work of a single actor

The approach breaks with the notion that innovation can be tied to a single organisation or actor. Instead, it argues that social change is the result of multi-sector collaboration: the state, civil society, the business sphere and academia jointly create social value.

The essence of the ecosystem perspective is interdependence and coordination. Each actor contributes its own resources and knowledge to the shared goal while also learning from the process. Innovation is therefore not a single solution but a continuous dynamic of collaboration that shapes new institutional patterns and social norms.

2. A system-level process — and its policy impact

One important contribution of the Phills–Deiglmeier–Miller concept is that it interprets social innovation as a system-level process that is viable only when there is mobility, knowledge sharing and partnership among the actors.

This approach also strongly influenced later European and UN-level innovation policies, which today are built around the concepts of “intersectoral governance” and “co-creation”.