Social innovation: what do we know and do not know about it

The objective of this research project involved establishing a scientific framework out of the most relevant research outputs on social innovation. To this end, we carried out bibliometric research of 1,150 works to provide an outline of the historical evolution of social innovation studies, the scientific fields that have done the most research on this theme as well as those works with the greatest influence over subsequent research. Drafting a map of citations traced the epistemological foundations of social innovation research and identified the micro-foundations to the field as well as the predominant conceptual references. Analysis of the most cited articles furthermore portrayed the most relevant theoretical approaches interconnected with the conceptual boundaries, the characteristics of social innovation processes and in addition to the more holistic perspective focusing on the surrounding contextual factors. The key contribution stems from setting out a theoretical guide to the research produced on social innovation.