Part I: Introduction -- Chapter 1: Social Innovation: A Sympathetic and Critical Interpretation -- Part II: Urban contexts for local innovations -- Chapter 3: “Everybody on Board? Opportunity Structures for Social Innovations in Münster” -- Chapter 4: Inertia, Clearings, and Innovations in Malmö -- Chapter 5: Birmingham, Priority to Economics, Social Innovation at the Margins -- Chapter 6: Social Policies and Governance in Geneva: What about Social Innovation? -- Chapter 7: Milan, a City Lost in the Transition from the Growth Machine Paradigm Towards a Social Innovation Approach -- Chapter 8: Poor but Sexy? Berlin as a Context for Social Innovation -- Part III: Local Social Innovations -- Chapter 9: Social Innovations as Messages: Democratic Experimentation in Local Welfare Systems -- Chapter 10: Warsaw: Paving new ways for participation of mothers, fathers and children in local public and social life - The MaMa Foundation -- Chapter 11: Zagreb: Parents in Action – Innovative ways of support and policies for children, women and families.-Chapter 12: Amsterdam: Neighbourhood Stores for Education, Research, and Talent Development – the BOOT project -- Chapter 13: Lille: Co-production of housing in a major urban renewal district -- Chapter 14: Pamplona: Neighbourhood Children services – a grassroots and local council initiative -- Chapter 15: Berlin: Kreuzberg acts – entrepreneurship in the district -- Chapter 16: Milan: “We help you to help yourself”. The project of the Fondazione Welfare Ambrosiano -- Chapter 17: Stockholm: Innovative ways of supporting children of single (lone) mothers -- Chapter 18: NijmEGEN: Work corporations - for the unemployed, by the unemployed -- Chapter 19: Birmingham: The Youth Employment and Enterprise Rehearsal project -- Chapter 20: Birmingham: A “locality approach” to combating worklessness -- Chapter 21: Münster: How Prevention Visits Improve Local Child Protection -- Chapter 22: BARCELONA: A citizen´s agreement for an inclusive CITY -- Chapter 23: Bern: Integration guidelines -- Part IV: Conclusions -- Chapter 24: The Implicit Normative Assumptions of Social Innovation Research: Embracing the Dark Side -- Chapter 25: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Social Innovation.

Open Access

This book addresses the practice of social innovation, which is currently very much in the public eye. New ideas and approaches are needed to tackle the severe and wicked problems with which contemporary societies are struggling. Especially in times of economic crisis, social innovation is regarded as one of the crucial elements needed to move forward. Our knowledge of its dynamics has significantly progressed, thanks to an abundance of studies on social innovation both general and sector-specific. However, despite the valuable research conducted over the past years, the systematic analysis of social innovation is still contested and incomplete. The questions asked in the book are the following: 1. What is the nature of social innovations? 2.What patterns can be identified in social innovations emerging at the local level? 3.How is the emergence and spread of social innovations related to urban governance? More precisely, which conditions and arrangements facilitate and hinders social innovation? We explore these questions using different types of data and methods, and studying different contexts. In particular, we focus on innovations that aim at solving problems of the young unemployed, single parents and migrants. The analysis is based on original research carried out in the period 2010-2014 in the framework of the European project WILCO.