Social Innovation and Civil Society: Content, Processes and Empowerment

This theoretical essay aims to analyze the strategic roles of civil society in the three fundamental dimensions of social innovation identified by Moulaert et al. (2005): content, process, and empowerment. Thus, the strategic relevance of civil society's performance in the process of development, implementation, and diffusion of social innovations is pointed out. The discussions indicate that in the content dimension, the diagnosis and idealization of solutions to their own social needs is a fundamental strategic action of civil society. In this way, one can collaborate and create a synergy, as well as increase public capacity in that it acts together around the problems of the communities legitimizing their decisions to improve the productive capacity through learning, adaptation, and generation of results visible. In the process dimension, there is a need to coordinate the different parts that act in the system with the purpose of building and maintaining networks of relationships and cooperation for its operation. The empowerment dimension underscores the process of formation and consolidation of regional identities, in which civil society recognizes its power of collaboration, becoming an active agent in finding solutions to local social needs, acting creatively without waiting for a change top-down and general in the policy, in the economy, or the institutional assets and infrastructure of the system. It is concluded that the success factors in the implementation of social innovation are in the cooperation between actors and their articulation to innovate; as well as in the strength to deal with obstacles.