Introduction

Social innovation (SI), in academia and praxis, has been subject to multiple and contested orientations. The concept’s roots can be traced back to define democratic revolutions, social reforms, and movements (Chalmers, Reference Chalmers2012; Marques et al., Reference Marques, Morgan and Richardson2018) like Robert Owen’s community experiments and cooperative movement (Sinclair & Baglioni, Reference Sinclair and Baglioni2014). Some references to SI go back to the French revolution where social reforms were associated with the concept (Godin, Reference Godin2012). The foray of SI into academia is, however, recent (Cajaiba-Santana, Reference Cajaiba-Santana2014). Ayob et al. (Reference Ayob, Teasdale and Fagan2016) unpacked its dynamic evolution from its sociological origins focusing on shifts in social relations, to being tossed within scholarship exploring technological changes, and more recently into Business and Management as a mean towards generating social impact. Onwards of the 1990s, the concept has seen increasing prominence in policymaking discourses (Chalmers, Reference Chalmers2012; Moulaert et al., Reference Moulaert, Jessop, Hulgård, Hamdouch, Moulaert, MacCallum, Mehmood and Hamdouch2013). Hence, SI as a concept, can hardly be attributed to any specific field or discipline, making the term profoundly malleable. This malleability presents several risks in the form of appropriation via “particular political and cultural presuppositions” being “folded unproblematically into ‘business as usual’, strengthening the hegemonic capacity of capitalism” (Teasdale et al., Reference Teasdale, Roy, Ziegler, Mauksch, Dey and Raufflet2020, p. 433), thereby allowing SI to be used for fostering heterogeneous agendas that have little to do with common good (Moulaert & MacCallum, Reference Moulaert and MacCallum2019). The novel contribution of this paper is a critical discussion of the risks associated with mainstream sectors’ appropriative usage of the concept of SI towards fostering agendas that risk deviating it away from the creation of any common good. More specifically, the public sector can be guilty of passing on non-novel and/or neoliberal policy as SI. For-profit private sector ventures can commodify and profit off marginalised communities in the name of SI. The third sector also cannot be uncritically accepted as a diffusor of SI.

To discuss these problems, we structure the paper as follows: First, we describe what we mean by appropriation, offering a conceptual understanding of the concept and presenting how we use it; second, the methodology for the systematic literature review process is presented, underpinning the conceptual contribution of this paper; third, we establish what makes SI distinct from other mainstream innovations, in particular its focus on addressing the social needs of marginalised communities, especially needs “neglected or exacerbated by the state/market apparatus”, via mobilising their social relationships and empowering them (Moulaert & MacCallum, Reference Moulaert and MacCallum2019, p. 22); fourth, we evaluate how these distinguishing tenets of SI can be eroded by public, private, and third sector appropriation; fifth, we present SI discourses’ current trajectory in academia to identify which school of thought based on Montgomery’s (Reference Montgomery2016) typology is gaining momentum: The technocratic school whose views aid furthering existing hierarchies, which in our view is guilty of appropriating SI, or the democratic views, that promote dilution of power structures in favour of the marginalised, which truly represents SI. We identify that alongside the democratic, the technocratic side has gained prominence in literature, warranting some critical concerns. Lastly, in the discussion, we weigh the pros and cons of the various sectoral engagement with SI to suggest why the third sector’s sub-section comprising bottom-up community-oriented initiatives, has an edge over the others in upholding the democratic side of SI.

Our concerns emerge upon witnessing abundant resources and policy being driven towards SI across Europe, including the UK, notably The European Green Deal by the European Commission (SIMRA, 2020), SI funding by the UK government (Roy et al., Reference Roy, McHugh, Sinclair and Greve2017) and funders (see NESTA, 2021), and multiplying SI research centres in UK universities; yet, third sector organisations (TSO) struggle to access finance (Pape et al., Reference Pape, Brandsen, Pahl, Pieliński, Baturina, Brookes, Chaves-Ávila, Kendall, Matančević, Petrella and Rentzsch2020). We must pay attention to what is claimed as SI since this labelling determines who wins and loses in this process. It is incumbent on academic research to highlight such concerns. Hence, we present why we think there is more merit in advancing a democratic view of SI over technocratic ones. This way our discussion cuts across diverse stakeholders: it calls upon scholars to problematise SI policy discourses, and advance critical discussions on injecting market logics into SI; it aims to invoke practitioners, be it for-profits, charities, or social enterprises, and policymakers into rethinking the purpose, process, and outcome of their SI interventions.

What we Mean by Appropriation

To appreciate the conceptual contribution of this paper we must first explain what we mean with the term appropriation. The term, apparently, lacks a strong theoretical foundation but is used with varying degree of normativity in academia. Within socio-cultural studies, Rogoff (Reference Rogoff, Hall, Murphy and Soler2008, p. 66) defines appropriation as dynamic and active processes of acquiring or engaging with “concepts, memories, knowledge, skills” to fit the owner’s purpose. Within Marxist tradition, appropriation refers to the utilisation of an object by a human to connect with nature; it is a transformative process of realising a new object by an entity where the appropriated object is “naturalized” or “embedded” within the appropriating entity’s sensibilities (Delaney et al., Reference Delaney, Timbrell, Chan, Avital and Crowston2008, p. 13). Most views on appropriation can be stripped down to this aspect of transforming an object to serve the utility of the appropriator. Within innovation literature, appropriation refers to the innovator’s control over profit (Ahuja et al., Reference Ahuja, Lampert and Novelli2013); social movement literature refers to appropriation as the adoption of elements like selection of certain repertoire for contestation (Crossley, Reference Crossley2002). Within such views, a host of scholarship equates appropriation with exploitation. Appropriation can mean “the intentional reinterpretation of ideas across cultural, spatial and temporal contexts aimed at definitional power” (Großklaus, Reference Großklaus2015, p. 1254). Thus, in cultural and media studies appropriation relates to the exploitative “use of a culture’s symbols, artifacts, genres, rituals, or technologies” by another usually dominant culture (Rogers, Reference Rogers2006, p. 474), without “permission, and/or compensation” resulting in the “commodifications of marginalized and/or colonized cultures” (p. 477).

The bottom-line is that appropriation means laying claim over a material (like place, artefacts, profit) or abstract (labour surplus value, symbols, concept) object to accrue benefits to the appropriator. It ranges from benign adoption to exploitative usage. SI literature applied the term limitedly and colloquially (see Moulaert et al., Reference Moulaert, Jessop, Hulgård, Hamdouch, Moulaert, MacCallum, Mehmood and Hamdouch2013) to refer to efforts that contradicts SI’s “values of solidarity, reciprocity and association” (Moulaert & MacCallum, Reference Moulaert and MacCallum2019, p. 17). We combine these positions to mean appropriation as the reinterpretation or exploitation of the SI concept by distorting its “social” component to serve the appropriator’s agenda (be it the public, private or the third sector) in ways that take the concept away from the pursuit of common good. This interpretation is applied as a conceptual lens in our study.

Is Social Innovation a Separate Innovation Class?

Social innovation clearly belongs to the wider area of innovation. “Innovation” itself often remains difficult to define, but we can preliminarily understand it as “the multi‐stage process whereby organisations transform ideas into new/improved products, service or processes, in order to advance, compete and differentiate themselves successfully in their marketplace” (Baregheh et al., Reference Baregheh, Rowley and Sambrook2009, p. 1334). Among other definitions, Grimm et al. (Reference Grimm, Fox, Baines and Albertson2013) define SI as “new products and services that address social needs, that is, products and services which help to build more sustainable, cohesive and inclusive societies” (Grimm et al., Reference Grimm, Fox, Baines and Albertson2013, p. 438). These needs are generally ignored or worsened by market mechanisms (Harazin & Kósi, Reference Harazin and Kósi2013). In these definitions, while the component of new products and services are present i.e. something “new” is created from innovation processes, the end goal is substantially different: marketisation of the “new” in the former; building better societies with the “new” in the latter. To flesh out such differences between SI and other innovations, we compared existing scholarship from the systematically selected articles and identified three positions.

A first position entails not treating SI as a distinct innovation group; instead, SI should be studied using similar vocabulary to other innovations. Here, the “social” is seen as an inadequate adjective to reasonably distinguish SI from other innovations. The argument is that other innovations also are anchored in a social context (Witkamp et al., Reference Witkamp, Raven and Royakkers2011), result from a social process and can yield social benefits—for example, spill-over societal benefits of information technology (van der Have & Rubalcaba, Reference Van der Have and Rubalcaba2016). Even the European Commission grouped SI with mainstream innovations in its Europe 2020 strategy (Sabato et al., Reference Sabato, Vanhercke and Verschraegen2017). One of the most cited papers on SI by Pol and Ville (Reference Pol and Ville2009) establishes a subgroup called “bifocal innovations”–where business and social innovation intersect, for example, the internet with its exponential positive externality. Hence, proponents of this view suggest SI should be reconceptualised as a “new paradigm for innovation management” (Degelsegger & Kesselring, Reference Degelsegger, Kesselring, Franz, Hochgerner and Howaldt2012, p. 70) instead of being studied as a separate innovation type.

A second position promotes a middle-ground through identifying points of overlap and departure between SI and other innovations. For Lehtola and Ståhle (Reference Lehtola and Ståhle2014), the core tenets of most innovations are similar, especially innovation “as activity” and a component of change (p. 167). Therefore, all innovations are disruptive, involve multiple and diverse stakeholders, and concern varying spatial contexts. However, it is emphasised that this change component is social instead of economic for SI. Amidst overlap in the fundamental processual dimension, SI is separated from other innovations based on innovation’s initial conditions and outcomes (Lehtola & Ståhle, Reference Lehtola and Ståhle2014). Bund et al. (Reference Bund, Gerhard, Hoelscher and Mildenberger2015) conform by adding that while there are overlaps, SI is distinct from traditional innovation in its focus on social aspects. SI process can leverage technological advancements (Angelidou & Psaltoglou, Reference Angelidou and Psaltoglou2017; Ashta et al., Reference Ashta, Couchoro and Musa2014), and technological innovations can result from socially innovative processes (Loogma et al., Reference Loogma, Tafel-Viia and Ümarik2013). SI has also been considered as an extension of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Altuna et al., Reference Altuna, Contri, Dell’era, Frattini and Maccarrone2015) or pitched as “corporate social innovation” (Mirvis et al., Reference Mirvis, Herrera, Googins and Albareda2016).

The third position promotes SI’s exclusivity (Marques et al., Reference Marques, Morgan and Richardson2018; Solis-Navarrete et al., Reference Solis-Navarrete, Bucio-Mendoza and Paneque-Gálvez2021). One of the earliest scholarly attempts to separate social from technological innovation is by Ogburn (Reference Ogburn1964). SI is distinct in both its purpose and content. SI is intentional in its social welfare pursuit, making it markedly distinct to the market-oriented goals of traditional innovations (Bright & Godwin, Reference Bright and Godwin2010; Cajaiba-Santana, Reference Cajaiba-Santana2014; Edwards-Schachter et al., Reference Edwards-Schachter, Matti and Alcántara2012; Solis-Navarrete et al., Reference Solis-Navarrete, Bucio-Mendoza and Paneque-Gálvez2021; Soma et al., Reference Soma, van den Burg, Hoefnagel, Stuiver and van der Heide2018). Content-wise, SI’s non-material form is juxtaposed against the tangible technical innovations (Weerawardena & Mort, Reference Weerawardena and Mort2012). The process of innovation also serves as a key point of departure. Mainstream innovations relate to processes and products (Howaldt & Kopp, Reference Howaldt, Kopp, Franz, Hochgerner and Howaldt2012; Tortia et al., Reference Tortia, Degavre and Poledrini2020) or recombination of material capital (Edwards-Schachter et al., Reference Edwards-Schachter, Matti and Alcántara2012); whereas SI is about changes in social practices (Blanco & León, Reference Blanco and León2017; Neumeier, Reference Neumeier2012, Reference Neumeier2017). The social aspect remains central within SI processes. Thus, Habisch and Adaui (Reference Habisch, Adaui, Osburg and Schmidpeter2013, p. 72) state “…rather they [social innovations] owe themselves to a recombination of relationships among different actors, which are grounded in an extension or transformation of their social or cultural capital”. van der Have and Rubalcaba (Reference Van der Have and Rubalcaba2016) identify a scholarly agreement around social need-orientation and social relations-mobilisation as “core elements” (p. 1930) of SI, arguing that definitions should be built around these dimensions. Empowerment of marginalised actors is also one of SI’s core tenets (Spijker & Parra, Reference Spijker and Parra2018). Shifts in power relations can materialise as resistance to existing systems, socio-political capacity enhancement (Bock, Reference Bock2016) and pursuit of inclusive political processes (Marques et al., Reference Marques, Morgan and Richardson2018). Hence, the recombination of social relations and redistribution of power in favour of marginalised communities remain at the crux of SI (Blanco & León, Reference Blanco and León2017; Bund et al., Reference Bund, Gerhard, Hoelscher and Mildenberger2015; Marques et al., Reference Marques, Morgan and Richardson2018; Scott-Cato & Hillier, Reference Scott-Cato and Hillier2010). Marginalised or disadvantaged groups, identified notably as SI’s primary beneficiary, include those deprived of access to essentials for a dignified life (von Jacobi et al., Reference von Jacobi, Nicholls and Chiappero-Martinetti2017) and/or who are in a disadvantageous position that limits their capabilities to integrate into or cope with mainstream societal arrangements (Fougère & Meriläinen, Reference Fougère and Meriläinen2021), where their needs are neglected or worsened by state/ market mechanisms (Montgomery, Reference Montgomery2016).

Upon comparing the three positions, we contend the distinguishing aspects of SI, illustrated in Fig. 2, can only at best be by-products of business and/or technological innovation. Without foregrounding SI on these dimensions collectively, it is not possible to separate the concept meaningfully from other innovation classes, cement its commitment to common good, and identify appropriative usage of the concept. Additionally, reducing the process down to other innovations negates the concept’s expanse, which cuts across numerous contexts, challenges, and actors (Ziegler, Reference Ziegler2017).

Fig. 2

Core and distinguishing elements of social innovation

Appropriation of Social Innovation by Different Sectors

The malleability of SI enabled various actors and sectors to use the concept to advance and legitimise their agendas (Ashta et al., Reference Ashta, Couchoro and Musa2014; Marques et al., Reference Marques, Morgan and Richardson2018; Pellicer-Sifres et al., Reference Pellicer-Sifres, Belda-Miquel, López-Fogués and Boni Aristizabal2017). Such plural claims have led authors to wonder if SI is just a “political jargon” (Bock, Reference Bock2016, p. 554), or a buzzword (Pol & Ville, Reference Pol and Ville2009), thereby lacking scientific mettle (Neumeier, Reference Neumeier2012). Nonetheless, having considered SI’s distinguishing aspects, we contend it is not a hollow concept. Hence, we now assess how well these distinguishing aspects are upheld by key sectors, as reported in the reviewed articles, and why we think certain claimants can be appropriating the term to foster agendas away from the common good.

Separating Social Innovation for the (Common) Good from the Bad

Arguments against the appropriative and neoliberalist usage of social innovation are consistent with the distinction/typology proposed by Montgomery (Reference Montgomery2016) on SI schools of thought: technocratic and democratic. This distinction is based on considering to whom the social innovation process gives voice or power. The technocratic side is akin to a neoliberal apologist position reinforcing existing status quo. Conversely, the democratic stance promotes social justice and empowerment of deprived communities (Montgomery, Reference Montgomery2016). The technocratic side has some correspondence with our conceptualisation of appropriation of SI to foster agendas away from the common good, whereas the democratic side fosters the common good. We take interest in this typology since it can help us establish the current trajectory of SI discourse within academia. We extracted some broad strokes to identify the criteria composing the two schools of thoughts, respectively. These are developed primarily from Montgomery (Reference Montgomery2016) but are combined with the takes on neoliberalist SI from Fougère et al. (Reference Fougère, Segercrantz and Seeck2017) and Fougère and Meriläinen (Reference Fougère and Meriläinen2021) and inclusive SI from Marques et al. (Reference Marques, Morgan and Richardson2018) as these papers offered conceptual convergence.

The technocratic side’s characteristics broadly include: (1) Fusing boundaries between the state and the market and minimising confrontation against hegemonic initiatives; (2) shifting responsibility to the third sector to justify welfare state cuts; (3) prioritising market competition especially under the pretext of efficiency; (3a) necessitate initiative upscaling to justify introduction of novel private sector-led funding mechanisms or investments; (3b) hence, SI gets assessed by conventional economic metrics like social return on investment; (4) pivoting the innovation process’ success on individual talent or “charismatic” entrepreneurs; (5) extending such Schumpeterian view from the economic realm to the political that houses an “elitist theory of democracy” (Montgomery, Reference Montgomery2016, p. 1989); (6) commodifying the meaning of ‘social’; for example, equating empowerment with successes as a competitive individual; (7) focusing on labour market inclusion as a key answer to societal ails.

Conversely, the democratic side, on top of resisting the above, largely embodies the following: (1) communities are at the heart of knowledge construction; (2) social relations transformation is not a competition-based pursuit; (3) community-led or collective action-based initiatives are prioritised which meet social needs via increases in “social and political capacities” (p. 1991); (4) SI process can lead to the politicisation of marginalised groups, via horizontal power distribution. Therefore, unless a process deemed to be SI “effectively delivers a more inclusive political process, by integrating previously neglected groups; and unless it steers policy towards addressing human needs that were previously unmet” and instead, only skews power towards the already powerful actors, then “real SI” has not taken place (Marques et al., Reference Marques, Morgan and Richardson2018, p. 500).

These above criteria thus gave us a frame to categorise the selected articles along technocratic, democratic, or mixed classifications. Figure 3 illustrates these categories and their distribution. Figure 4 shows the trajectory of the publications. Jointly, the figures show that although the democratic perspective leads in number and is promisingly climbing upwards, the technocratic side maintains a strong foothold within SI discourse and therefore, merits attention. The difference is marginal and there is no guarantee the trends will continue as we observe sharp shifts in the trajectory of each in Fig. 4. The technocratic school’s foothold is apparently predicated on promoting the primacy of economic or neoliberalist processes as SI. Table 1 outlines four of the dominant avenues via which the case for such stance is presented within literature: For-profits, social enterprises, cross-sectoral collaboration, and policy. Table 1 also lists example papers and summarises how the contributions are technocratic even though the proposed interventions yield social outcomes. For example, Shaw and de Bruin (Reference Shaw and De Bruin2013) is technocratic because the article emphasises on the economic opportunities for social enterprises to commercialise social impact or attain cost-based efficiency (Montgomery, Reference Montgomery2016). Articles on policy for or as SI or cross-sector collaboration are labelled technocratic when they promote neoliberalism by privileging private sector organisations for the delivery of welfare services (Fougère & Meriläinen, Reference Fougère and Meriläinen2021).

Fig. 3

Categorising social innovation records

Fig. 4

Publication trajectory

Table 1

Example of concepts by which the technocratic school of thought is advanced in literature

Avenue for advancing SI	Example of articles	Summative reason for being labelled as technocratic
Private sector for-profits	SI as CSR (Altuna et al., Reference Altuna, Contri, Dell’era, Frattini and Maccarrone2015; Dionisio & Vargas, Reference Dionisio and De Vargas2020) SI as workplace innovation like workers’ productivity or skill enhancement (Pot et al., Reference Pot, Dhondt, Oeij, Franz, Hochgerner and Howaldt2012)	Ultimate beneficiary of SI is the for-profit organisation via yielding economic returns or increase in its capacity to do so
Social entrepreneurship and/or social enterprise	Concerned with commercialisation of social impact and upscaling for economic returns (Shaw & de Bruin, Reference Shaw and De Bruin2013) Uses business lens of competition, strategy, barriers to entry to obtain ‘clients’ (Weerawardena & Mort, Reference Weerawardena and Mort2012)	Prioritises on the economic facet over the social one; SI is assessed using conventional economic/business metrics
Cross-sector collaboration	Key targets around expanding profit, brand image, or sustainability (Austin & Seitanidi, Reference Austin and Seitanidi2012) Or gaining legitimacy (Harrisson, Reference Harrisson, Franz, Hochgerner and Howaldt2012)	Collaboration benefits private sector’s economic ends over any telling social need; ignores sectoral power disparities
Policy	Aims at strengthening business communities or private sector (Klievink & Janssen, Reference Klievink and Janssen2014) Priority on enhancing businesses’ capacity to deliver social goals (Alsudairi & Tatapudi, Reference Alsudairi and Tatapudi2014)	Strengthens private sector for delivering policy objectives, making an implicit case for privatisation of welfare services or outsourcing contracts to the sector i.e., risks promoting neoliberalism

Since the technocratic side represents the clearest case of appropriative usage of SI for fostering heterogeneous agendas, which is the focus of this paper, we only show examples from this position in Table 1. Figure 5 outlines the disciplinary affiliation of the authors of the review where we see that a significant chunk of scholarship within the technocratic camp comes from Schools of Business, Management, and Economics. Notably, the democratic side shows higher evidence of multi and cross-disciplinary engagement.

Fig. 5

Discipline affiliation of authors

Discussion & Conclusion: (Re)Defining the Sectoral Boundaries of Social Innovation

We started the enquiry from a recognition that negligent and liberal use of SI by various sectors has resulted in the appropriation of the term, amidst which some degree of demarcations is warranted. By establishing what SI stands for, based on its distinguishing aspects, we could identify when its core aspects are not upheld and therefore, when the notion of SI is appropriated with exploitative outcomes. Comparing various scholarly positions, we observe that SI is different from other types of innovations in at least two dimensions: firstly, its purpose and target group i.e. addressing social needs of marginalised or disadvantaged communities, and secondly, its intertwined process and/or outcome which is around mobilisation of social and/or power relations of such groups. We recognise that other innovations can have social outcomes, however this is not sufficient for defining any innovation as SI (Ayob et al., Reference Ayob, Teasdale and Fagan2016; Edwards-Schachter et al., Reference Edwards-Schachter, Matti and Alcántara2012). We recognise the learning points (Sinclair & Baglioni, Reference Sinclair and Baglioni2014) and shared strands between different innovation groups (Edwards-Schachter & Wallace, Reference Edwards-Schachter and Wallace2017). Nonetheless, such efforts should not translate into neglecting the distinct elements of SI and the concept’s progress in getting its foot in academia (Edwards-Schachter & Wallace, Reference Edwards-Schachter and Wallace2017).

Distinguishing SI from other innovations enables us to identify its appropriation for advancing heterogenous agendas. Hence, we highlighted the risks of appropriation by diverse actors. In expanding public sector’s appropriation of SI, we do not imply all the sector’s efforts are problematic. What is imperative is stringent scrutiny of any policy or programme adopting the notion of SI, which can easily be a trope for neoliberal policies. SI can potentially combat neoliberalism by realising its “promise to create sustainable economic growth and benefit those groups of society which are marginalised” (Grimm et al., Reference Grimm, Fox, Baines and Albertson2013, p. 446). SI can be “a mechanism for restoring depleted communities” (Chalmers, Reference Chalmers2012, p. 20). Evidently, we reserve more caution regarding the private sector’s for-profit efforts. Indeed, these organisations can be of varying sizes, and be locally or community embedded. Nonetheless, the profit-motive remains concerning with the risk of mission drift and commodification of social needs. Regarding the sector’s social impact, those efforts can be lauded without being subsumed within SI. The sector already has concepts like business or technological innovation, or CSR to go by. Finally, we also recognise the third sector’s ability to strengthen hegemonic forces, thus, prompting caution over its actions. If all three key sectors’ engagement with SI yields a possibility of appropriation via promoting agendas other than the common good, who is advancing SI? It appears that a subgroup of TSOs i.e. grassroots or bottom-up community initiatives, has more redeeming features compared to other actors. It does so by imbibing the core and distinguishing tenets of SI we identified earlier (Edwards-Schachter & Wallace, Reference Edwards-Schachter and Wallace2017). Grassroots TSOs: (i) can address situated needs (Pellicer-Sifres et al., Reference Pellicer-Sifres, Belda-Miquel, López-Fogués and Boni Aristizabal2017; Tortia et al., Reference Tortia, Degavre and Poledrini2020), (ii) are driven by local civil society actors or community organisations (Bund et al., Reference Bund, Gerhard, Hoelscher and Mildenberger2015; Estensoro, Reference Estensoro2015), (iii) can further systemic reforms and drive local political discourse (Blanco & León, Reference Blanco and León2017), and (iv) can enable the formation of sustainable communities (Pellicer-Sifres et al., Reference Pellicer-Sifres, Belda-Miquel, López-Fogués and Boni Aristizabal2017). Most importantly, community organisations act as a hub of local knowledge and local social relations (Altuna et al., Reference Altuna, Contri, Dell’era, Frattini and Maccarrone2015; Maclean et al., Reference Maclean, Harvey and Gordon2013). Such initiatives are intrinsically socially missioned and oriented towards transforming social and/or power relations of deprived or marginalised communities, thereby fitting the core and distinct dimensions of SI. With cross-sector collaboration, irrespective of its promise, the dominant group (e.g. the public sector) can subdue collaborators for own agenda (see Sinclair et al., Reference Sinclair, Mazzei, Baglioni and Roy2018) or resist SI altogether (Ghys, Reference Ghys2020). Such pervasive power play in the SI landscape calls for extra watchfulness in preventing playing SI into the hands of the powerful. Negotiating power dynamics is challenging since SI thrives within a complex ecosystem (Pel et al., Reference Pel, Haxeltine, Avelino, Dumitru, Kemp, Bauler, Kunze, Dorland, Wittmayer and Jørgensen2020), where public institutions and policy are influential components (Sinclair et al., Reference Sinclair, McHugh and Roy2021). Nonetheless, we can simultaneously recognise the supportive and jeopardising influences of an entity on SI’s potential.

Ultimately, SI has attracted immense resources and policy support within a context of unequal distribution of and access to resources. Hence, if rebranding anything and everything as SI becomes possible, we dilute the claim of the more marginalised or resource-poor initiatives on those support. To fight the appropriation of SI for agendas outside the common good and promote real SI practice, policy and scholarship, the democratic school of thought needs to be advanced. This can put SI in practice and policy through rigorous scrutiny and promote organisations undertaking real SI. It is the public and the third sectors that are committed to addressing democratisation and empowerment of marginalised communities. However, the former is by statutory obligation whereas the latter by motivation. This is not to say the third sector cannot misstep. What primarily helps the sector commit to SI is its segment that is spatially bound to a local community’s needs and inclusion by emerging from its very heart through collective action. Hence, we deem these organisations should be prioritised by resource providers, policymakers, and scholarship looking to promote SI.

We are aware that our position reiterates and reattaches normativity to the meaning of SI. Normativity, arguably, dissuades or stunts experimentation or debate. Nonetheless, SI has a strong normative tradition with the term ‘social’ rooted in human interaction and relationship building. It is, thus, counter-productive to attempt to disregard so. If we cannot postulate that such innovation is desirable, why pursue it in the first place by committing ample resources and policy in its favour? More importantly, if we posit SI with vulnerable communities’ needs or sensitive issues like climate crisis then ignoring a normative debate can make exploitation possible. Additionally, although our study utilises scholarship from the Global North, our take does not necessarily present a skewed and occidental view of SI (Pozzebon et al., Reference Pozzebon, Tello-Rozas and Heck2021). We believe that researchers should step up and associate with diverse disciplines to import alternative and critical views on SI. Our views adhere to the limited but existing critical commentary that urges caution regarding ill-considered application of concepts that beget grave policy and social implications (Montgomery, Reference Montgomery2016; Moulaert & MacCallum, Reference Moulaert and MacCallum2019; Sinclair et al., Reference Sinclair, Mazzei, Baglioni and Roy2018, Reference Sinclair, McHugh and Roy2021). Our study makes a conceptual contribution by applying the concept of appropriation on SI to consolidate and compare the possibility of so by the three key sectors to settle at the socially innovative promise of bottom-up community-oriented third sector organisations. Future research can empirically establish how such organisations uphold a democratic side of SI and what are their resource needs.