Specialists in building bridges. The SIC Research Community Roadmap. D2.4 of the SIC project
This paper outlines a roadmap for research in social innovation (SI) on behalf of the European H2020-funded SIC project. It argues that social innovation research develops in two directions: Firstly, the development of a distinct, interdisciplinary research field of "social innovation studies", and secondly, the development of social innovation research to support and enhance both SI practice and SI policy in the direction of solving social problems, addressing societal challenges and bringing about favourable social change. The development of the research field takes place within social science or the "inside" of the SI research domain. The development of its connectivity with social innovation practice and policy looks at the networked "outside", at interfaces, networks and boundary-spanning capabilities. The central aim of developing SI as a research field in the short term is to publish and sustain the research and scientific outcomes of SIC and its neighbouring projects. In the mid-term perspective, ensuring continuity and sustainability of SI research will be the key objective. This means overcoming the high dependency of the field on a sequence of EU-funded projects with limited timespans and challenges in keeping results current and alive (such as the databases and datasets of social innovations in the SI-DRIVE project or the case studies and toolkits for practice and policy developed by the SIC project). Projects need to be complemented by other forms of funding and investment into research infrastructures, both by dedicated longer-term programmes and the "mainstreaming" of SI contributions and research into socially and ecologically aware studies of innovation. Universities' and other research institutes' role in SI should expand in all dimensions: research and teaching, the "third mission" of engaging with society, consultancy, exchange, lobbying, and fostering the careers of young researchers. This also means creating centres and labs in the less equipped regions and countries. In the long term, that ...