Academic Social Innovation Centers: A Proposed Framework for a Theory of Change - Published in Social Innovations Journal
Nov 20, 2023
The Academic Social Innovation Framework can help existing and emerging academic centers define, assess, and refine their theory of change for social innovation.
Academia is poised to play a role in individuals’ intellectual advancement and in addressing the broader goals of advancing sustainable development, equality, human rights, and poverty reduction while tackling social challenges. To this end, many universities worldwide have established “impact centers” or “social innovation centers.” Although the centers share similar names, there is no uniformity among them in their agenda, strategy, and practice.
This diversity limits our ability to understand the unique contribution of Academic Social Innovation (ASI) centers to research and practice on tackling social problems. To fill this gap, this paper has three objectives:
1) to describe the state of the art of existing ASIs
2) to examine diverse and shared characteristics of the centers,
3) to frame guiding principles that will support the refinement of the theory of change of ASIs.
Based on our findings, we compiled a typology consisting of 3*3 themes, the Academic Social Innovation Framework (ASI Framework). It consists of three main themes: actors, structure, and the main objective. Each theme is then divided into three sub-themes, serving as assessment criteria illustrating the tensions that characterize the diverse centers.
