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This paper aims to advance the state of knowledge related to innovation and philanthropy, by exploring the emerging field of 'participatory grantmaking' (PGM) through the lens of innovation literature. While there are increasing amounts of European and global grantmakers utilizing more participatory methodologies in their grantmaking as a means to move power and increase the collective ability to create social good, there is yet to be any literature specifically exploring the links between these two fields. This conceptual paper, therefore, uses a broad reading of innovation literature to argue that it is most fruitful to consider PGM as innovation within four modalities: as a form of social innovation, process innovation, both radical and incremental innovation, and user-driven innovation. The paper ultimately finds that user-driven innovation (and in particular co-creation / co-production as a strategy to user-driven innovation) may provide the best examples of theory and practical relevance for those utilizing PGM as a means to democratize philanthropy in Europe and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing number of digitally-enabled social innovation initiatives have recently attracted social scholars' interest; and required an attentive consideration the complex entanglements between innovation, social agency and power. This paper contributes to the debate on this juvenile research field by analysing the different conceptualisations, cultural framing, and socio-political entanglements of digitally-enabled social innovation. It adopts a Foucauldian perspective in order to analyse the diverse discourses on socially transformative digital initiatives that work as 'social technologies' and support distinctive power/knowledge nexuses within diverse coalitions of actors. To this end, the paper applies a combination of bibliographic and text-mining methodologies to a large number of academic publications (191 scientific papers) and grey literature (1948 EU-project reports). Retrieved data are elaborated to map the emerging discursive field and identify a genealogy of associated concepts, the distribution of co-incidences and linkages with other concepts, and their ideological layers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the range of expansion/development/growth pathways (or scaling) that might occur with social innovations, with reference to social innovation in rural areas. It explores the lack of a clear conceptualization of both social innovation as a phenomenon and the possible growth and expansion pathways that might arise. Based on a survey of the diverse literature on the expansion/development/growth pathways of social innovations, and illustrated primarily by European examples, the paper develops a typology built around an attempted synthesis of the extant typologies found in published literature. Different theories of rural development are employed to help explain the divergent development pathways that might be anticipated in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally well-accepted in innovation research that consumer/user adoption of an invention is key to its diffusion. Despite general awareness about the importance of the adopter perspective in innovation diffusion, the majority of the literature on social innovation, hardly addresses the adoption-side of innovation diffusion. Social innovation potential therefore often remains under-utilized. In this paper the result of a review of 468 (predominantly English language) publications on social innovation is provided (based on Web of Science), searching for the adopter perspective in social innovation research. The findings show that, although some hints at the role of adopters, and their environment, can be found in the literature, attention for the willingness and capacities of potential adopters is meager in peer-reviewed publications. Propelled by high policy expectations, at the national as well as European level, scientific interest in social innovation has been booming over the last decade. Without a proper understanding of social innovation diffusion dynamics and adopter willingness and their interactions with existing institutions, expectations may not be fulfilled and specific social innovation policies that have been emerging across Europe may not be able to achieve intended policy goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social innovation is attracting increasing attention in research and policy, heightened by continuing austerity across Europe. Therefore, this paper examines earlier research into community-led local development (CLLD) initiatives in rural areas of Europe to develop our understanding of the meaning and scope of rural social innovation. We draw on a Schumpeterian view where innovations emerge from new combinations of resources that bring about positive changes and create value in society. A Schumpeterian social innovation framework is derived as the basis for re-analysing data from previous evaluations of LEADER policy in five different national contexts. This elicits a clearer understanding of social innovation in a rural development context, identifying different processes and outcomes that create social value. As the CLLD agenda and the demand for innovation in Europe gather pace, our aspirations are to inform future research and other initiatives on how to integrate social innovation into the design and evaluation of new rural development policies and programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]