Guest editorial: Complexity as a model for social innovation and social entrepreneurship: is there order in the chaos?

Abstract

In grappling with this question, the interrelated social innovation and social entrepreneurship literatures shifted focus from localised problems to “systemic and structural issues” (Nicholls et al., 2015), from individual “heroic” entrepreneurs to self-organising actors within ecosystems (Moore and Westley, 2011) and from a deterministic theory of change approach to a dynamic and non-linear process of scaling, spreading and impact (Corner and Ho, 2010). Research traditions which have developed from von Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory, Forrester’s System Dynamics, Cybernetics and the Santa Fe Institute’s Complex Adaptive Systems approach focus primarily on modelling, predicting and ultimately influencing the behaviour of complex systems. The social innovation field’s focus, particularly in a policy-related context, has moved from narrower and more procedural goals towards deeply entrenched systemic problems from climate change to social inequity – typified by the innovation-driving UN Sustainable Development Goals (Sachs et al., 2019). The focal points of many social innovation efforts – societal outcomes like obesity, educational attainment or criminal recidivism – are created by a constellation of factors from personal decision-making and individual psychology to broader economic, technological or cultural institutions (Finegood et al., 2010).