6 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION
in pathways (for example from early childhood into adulthood) and service journeys (whether of a patient through a health system or a passenger through an airport). With this emphasis on the individual has come an interest in their experience as well as in formal outcomes, in subjective feedback as well as the quantitative metrics of the late 20th century state and economy (hence the rise of innovations like the Expert Patients programmes, or Patient Opinion). Public policy has also turned towards the household, through innovations like nurse-family partnerships and green concierges.
What is distinct about social innovation? What is it about social innovation which is distinct from innovation in different fields? The definition we provided above emphasises that social innovation is distinctive both in its outcomes and in its relationships, in the new forms of cooperation and collaboration that it brings. As a result, the processes, metrics, models and methods used in innovation in the commercial or technological fields, for example, are not always directly transferable to the social economy. Measuring success Measuring success in the social economy is particularly problematic. In the market the simple and generally unambiguous measures are scale, market share and profit. In the social field the very measures of success may be contested as well as the tools for achieving results. Is it good or bad to cut car use? Is it good or bad to replace professional care by voluntary care? Is a good school one that excels at exam results? Is it always a good thing for an NGO to grow bigger? The answers are never straightforward and are themselves the subject of argument, evaluation and assessment. As we show, there has been a great deal of innovation around metrics – from tools to judge the impact of a particular project or programme to meta-analyses and assessments of much larger processes of social change. Organisational forms And then there are the organisational forms for innovation itself. We show that many innovations take shape within organisations – public agencies, social enterprises, mutuals, co-ops, charities, companies as well as loose associations. But the many examples set out below also show a field that is grappling with how to escape the constraints of organisation so as to make innovation itself open and social: posting ideas and welcoming responses from