Emerging social innovation ecosystems – a case study of urban development in Finland

Abstract

There is a growing awareness that technological and market innovations alone are not capable of overcoming the social and economic challenges that societies are facing. Social innovations see challenges as opportunities to make societies more sustainable through inclusive practices, collaboration and local initiatives. This article directs attention to the conditions under which social innovations can thrive and uses the concept of a social innovation ecosystem to describe urban development as a collaborative and empowering process. Drawing on data from an action-oriented case study, this article examines the emergence of a social innovation ecosystem in a Finnish suburb and its potential to enhance social innovations. Based on the results, many factors enhanced the emergence of the social innovation ecosystem, including the diversity of the ecosystem’s actors, strategic alignments at the local and national levels, brokerage functions, bottom-up initiatives, collective management and resident-driven knowledge creation. The emerging ecosystem has managed to create several social innovations that have the potential to strengthen social sustainability in the suburb. Thus, the social innovation ecosystem approach can be considered appropriate in the context of urban development.

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