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The Evolution of Social Innovation: Building a Sustainable and Resilient Society through Transformation

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 451

Special Issue Editors

Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR), University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
Interests: transformative social innovation; resilience dynamics and innovation; complexity and social- ecological transformation
Bissett School of Business, Mount Royal University, Calgary, AB T3E 6K6, Canada
Interests: social innovation; resilience; complexity; transformation through history
Applied Human Sciences, Concordia University, Montreal, QC H3G1Ma, Canada
Interests: social-ecological systems transformations; history of social innovation; complex systems dynamics in organizational change

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

Social innovation is an umbrella concept that includes a number of different definitions. For this Special Issue, we define social innovation as any idea, process, project, product, program or platform that challenges and ultimately transforms the fundamental culture, laws, social protocols, authority structures or resource flows of the system that created the problem in the first place. Using such a definition, this Special Issue seeks to explore not only the emergence of new social phenomena, but also how those phenomena affect the complex social contexts in which they arise. What do social innovations look like at different scales? What cross-scale dynamics characterize transformative social innovations? In what cases do social innovations build or reduce social–ecological resilience? The current cascading crises that are affecting the globe (health, economic, social and environmental), compounded further by COVID-19, have resulted in a varied response across cities, regions and countries. These varied responses can be viewed as experiments and provide a rich new comparative database for researchers. How has social innovation built resilience across different countries, contexts and cultures in the face of such crises? What can such comparisons tell us about the dynamics of successful social innovation and its relationship with broader social resilience? What do comparative historical cases tell us about the relationship between crises and transformational social innovation? Do critical analyses of social innovations reveal a shadow side, impacts that are harmful as well as well-intentioned? This Special Issue will showcase emerging theories, comparative cases or broad empirical studies that further our understanding of systemic social innovation and its relationship with building sustainable and resilient societies.

Prof. Dr. Frances Westley
Dr. Katharine Mcgowan
Dr. Ola Tjornbo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • social innovation
  • system dynamics
  • complex challenges
  • cross-scale dynamics
  • shadow side
  • transformation
  • resilience

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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