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SOCIAL INNOVATION AS THE PATHWAY
FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Marius BRAZDAUSKAS, Lina ŽIRNELĖ
Vilniaus Kolegija / University of Applied Sciences,
Faculty of Business Management, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Erika MATULIONYTĖ - JARAŠŪNĖ
Mykolas Romeris University, Kaunas, Lithuania.
Abstract
Currently the concept of social innovation is making its way into the international academic and political
discourse since social innovations have a capacity to combine societal and environmental goals with an
entrepreneurial spirit. Indeed, many socially conscious entrepreneurs have developed and applied in practice
innovative and creative business models to address social and environmental problems previously overlooked
by governmental, NGOs or business organizations. In this respect, social innovation is a promising tool and
approach towards sustainable development needs and priorities.
The objective of this paper is to analyze the concept of social innovation within the context of sustainable
development discourse by synthetizing the established and emerging definitions of social innovation. The
literature review indicates that social innovation may have many definitions since it is interrelated with many
other concepts like social entrepreneurship, sustainability, social welfare, etc. In this line, this paper seeks to
contribute to the current understanding of a social innovation and provide a comprehensive overview of the
existing literature by synthesizing existing conceptual studies on social innovation and its co-related concepts.
Keywords: social innovation, sustainable development, sustainability, social entrepreneurship.
Introduction
The concept of social innovation is gaining particular attention from politicians, academics,
business executives, and the general society. Indeed, social innovation is a promising tool to
address social challenges and to respond to pressing social / environmental needs.
Advancers of social innovations are awarded numerous awards, including the Nobel Peace
Prize for Muhammad Yunus who developed a microcredit / microfinance system in
Bangladesh. Indeed, many socially conscious entrepreneurs have developed and applied in
practice innovative and creative business models to address social and environmental
problems previously overlooked by governmental, NGOs or business organizations. In this
respect, social innovation is a promising tool and approach towards sustainable
development needs and priorities.
However, it could be noted that the field of social innovation has emerged primarily as a
field of particular practice (Mulgan, 2012). Mostly, social innovators firstly tried to address
the pressing needs and demands, and only afterwards they reflected on their successful
outcomes. In this respect, social innovation is a highly complex concept since its definition is
a wok-in-progress and it highly depends on the turns and success stories in practice.
Due to the aforementioned realities, the concept of social innovation undergoes
terminological profusion, confusion, and conceptual vagueness. Many researchers and
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