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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]

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]