1. Social Innovation: At the Intersection of Public Policy and Social Entrepreneurship
Gordon E. Shockley
Peter M. Frank
ARNOVA 2014 – Chicago
November 18, 2014

2. Fabio Rosa (Brazil, 1980s)

3. Tennessee Valley Authority (USA, 1930s)

4. Social innovation sits at the intersection of public policy and social entrepreneurship
Proposition 1: Public policy and social entrepreneurship are homologous instruments of social innovation that crucially depend on a functioning, if not vibrant, civil society.
Proposition 2: Public policy and social entrepreneurship both crucially rely on the non-market entrepreneurship as the driver of change.
Proposition 3: The key between the two is their characteristic utilization of knowledge and institutional resources.

5. 1.A Homology: Public policy
Top-down social change: Western welfare states are “…now predominantly occupied with the production and distribution of social well-being” (Esping-Anderson, 1990).
Public policy: ideas into action. “The process of policymaking includes the manner in which problems get conceptualized and brought to government for solution; governmental institutions formulate alternatives and select policy solutions; and those solutions get implemented, evaluated, and revised” (Sabatier, 1999).

6. 1.B Homology: Social Entrepreneurship
“A social entrepreneur is an individual, group, network, organization, or alliance of organizations that seeks sustainable, large-scale change through pattern-breaking ideas in what governments, nonprofits, and businesses do to address significant social problems” (Light, 2008).

7. 2. Non-market entrepreneurship: Policy and Social Entrepreneurs
Policy entrepreneurs: “[T]heir defining characteristic, much as in the case of a business entrepreneur, is their willingness to invest their resources – time, energy, reputation, and sometimes money – in the hope of future return” (Kingdon, 1995).
Social entrepreneurs: “Faced with whole problems, social entrepreneurs readily cross disciplinary boundaries, pulling together people from different spheres with different kinds of experience and expertise, who can, together, build workable solutions that are qualitatively new” (Bornstein, 2007).

8. 3.A Utilization of Knowledge
Hayekian knowledge: "Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge. But a little reflection will show that there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and space." (Hayek, 1945, p. 521)
Bottom-up social entrepreneurs have this; top-down policy- makers might not.
Bottom-up policymaking != social entrepreneurship
Lipsky’s “street level bureaucrats”: Unlike social entrepreneurs, they do not conceive of innovations themselves.

9. 3.B Utilization of Institutional Resources: State Capacity
Higher State Capacity
Lower State Capacity
Top-down Social Entrepreneurship
Government function:
Originator and implementer
Bungler
Bottom-up Social Entrepreneurship
Adapter and promoter
Imitator and adopter

10. Conclusion. Social innovation, Policymaking, and Social Entrepreneurship
Co-production: Social entrepreneurship can be usefully seen as co-produced public policymaking without institutional safeguards of democratic policymaking.
Social policy in welfare states: “The real source of social policy growth is found in industrialism, urbanization, and population change [and globalization?]. These establish new urgent social needs that cannot easily be met by the traditional family, community, or market-place” (Esping- Anderson, 1990, p. 105).
State-building and American political development
Two patterns of institutional development: (1) State building as patchwork (Kirznerian) and (2) state building as reconstitution (Schumpeterian) (Skowronek, 1982, p. 16)
“Positive” federal policy and decentralized policy control
Policy formation was delegated to the states
Proliferation of independent agencies
Delegation of vast amounts of legislative power to executive agencies (Bensel, 1984, p. 149)