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Validating Social Innovations for Scaling
The ‘Validating Social Innovations for Scaling’ Tool has been developed by Genio based on our involvement in scaling social innovations over the past twelve years. It has been produced in the context of our participation in the Facilitating United approaches to Social Innovation across Europe (FUSE) project. The FUSE consortium is a partnership of organisations across Ireland, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Portugal, with the aim of inter alia establishing a National Competence Centre for Social Innovation (NCCSI) within each participating country.
In this document we have outlined various definitions of social innovation and how it differentiates from social enterprise. The importance of having end beneficiaries/consumers at the centre of each innovation, from design, through implementation and evaluation, has been highlighted. We have presented a journey towards scaling drawing attention to decision-making points and the various routes to scaling.
The application of this Tool will provide opportunities to learn about how well it works in different situations.
Who is this Tool for?
- ESF Managing Authorities
- Support Organisations
- intermediaries, and capacity builders
- All those tasked with decisions regarding the potential of particular social innovations to be replicated, or scaled, to meet social and environmental challenges within and across countries.
View/Download Validating Social Innovations for Scaling here
Key Points
- Social innovations can be developed to address specific problems or to tackle more ‘complex’ challenges. This guide provides demonstrable examples of successful social innovations designed to address specific challenges
- Social innovation plays a vital role in creating effective solutions to address the societal challenges faced by many countries across Europe. In times when climate and digital transformation is changing at pace, social innovations need support to consolidate, grow and evolve to keep up.
- Validating a social innovation as having the potential to scale does not necessarily mean it is ready to scale. Rigorous planning is required to scale a social innovation successfully to ensure all variables are considered, challenges and risks identified, and mitigation strategies developed.