Create value
What?
This part of the social innovation process focuses on how to create, measure, and highlight the value contributed by the developed solution—the social innovation. It is important to track and measure the results, impacts, and outcomes achieved once the solution is implemented. It is also important to visualize and communicate this in a clear and engaging way.
When we talk about creating value through social innovation, we’re really talking about three things.
- To strive for genuine benefits in the form of improved living conditions at the individual, organizational, and societal levels.
- To monitor the results and impacts achieved.
- To highlight the values we strive for and create.
Why?
Social impact assessments can help refine strategies, improve resource allocation, and maximize the value we aim to contribute to society. In addition, impact assessments can provide insights and improve future projects, establish the project’s legitimacy with funders and stakeholders, and serve as a basis for securing funding, external grants, and investments for continued development. Finally, it is important to remember that the impacts and results themselves can be used to communicate and disseminate solutions to other actors and segments of society.
How?
There are several different methods and tools for identifying, tracking, and highlighting the value of social innovation. Here are a few:
- The Theory of Changeis a model for describing how social change can be achieved through a chain of inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts. The model can be used to visualize both potential and demonstrable causal relationships between the various parts of the innovation process. A limitation of this model is that it is difficult to identify all the factors that influence a social innovation, and that complex cause-and-effect relationships can be difficult to substantiate.
- The Social Impact Canvas isa tool designed to help measure and understand the impact of an organization’s work, particularly in the cultural and creative sectors. It helps identify appropriate metrics that focus on the things—the data—that truly matter. Furthermore, the Social Impact Canvas can help identify new revenue streams and thereby support financial stability.
- A model for demonstrating the value of social innovationis a model designed to identify and highlight the value that social innovations create in society, developed in collaboration between innovation researchers, innovation promoters, and innovators.
- Social Return onInvestment (SROI)is a model for calculating and quantifying social values in monetary terms. This may include, for example, estimates of the societal costs of unemployment and sick leave, as well as the savings that social innovation can help generate. One limitation of this model is that the calculations are approximate and that social values cannot be fully translated into economic values.
There are several challenges associated with measuring social impacts. Among other things, these measurements can be complex and time- and resource-intensive to carry out. It can also be difficult and misleading to reduce multifaceted value creation to measurable figures. Furthermore, one might ask what happens in a society where the demand for quantitative measurability is prioritized over more elusive societal benefits? It is therefore important to set one’s Theory of Change a realistic and reasonable level in relation to the initiative’s resources and scope.
Guiding questions
- What values are sought and achieved for individuals, organizations, and society?
- How do we follow up on and build on the results to ensure continued development and benefits?
- How are the values created made visible and communicated to target audiences and other stakeholders?
Understand societal challenge
Envisioning societal change
Mobilise
Develop and test
Realise and disseminate
Create value
The social innovation process
The social innovation process
Methods and tools
Here you will find a selection of methods and tools that illustrate the element “Creating Value.” Some of them are also ideal for use as tools in your innovation process. They have been selected because they work in various contexts and in different parts of the world. Many of them promote innovative thinking, shifts in perspective, inclusion, and co-creation.
Please let us know if you have any other suggestions that you think might work!
Example
Here, we compile inspiring examples of social innovations that create, measure, and highlight the social value that the developed solution generates for the individuals, organizations, and communities involved.
Read, listen, and watch
The tips below have been selected to deepen your understanding of the “Creating Value” element. They are intended to provide practical guidance for designing and implementing innovative initiatives. Hopefully, these tips can also serve as a lens through which to reflect on “the way we’ve always done things,” paving the way for further social innovations.
Most of the tips are freely available via the links provided.
