The Practice of Social Innovation: The Strategies and Tools of Philanthropic Foundations

Social innovation promises to deliver social goods more effectively and find new solutions to endemic problems. However, the concept is ambiguous and becoming fuzzier; it is not clear what actors are doing—or how or why—when they engage in social innovation. As a starting point for overcoming the fragmentation and definitional contestation in social innovation research, this article examines the practice of social innovation by one of the most important actors in the domain: philanthropic foundations. Analyzing the social innovation activities of Canadian foundations reveals that foundations find the term “social innovation” vague and struggle to identify specific actions that it prescribes. Yet, fundamentally, all foundations view social innovation as “the purposeful actualization of novelty in a social setting.” This article then introduces social innovation tools (tools) and social innovation strategies as devices for understanding the practice of social innovation.