The main social innovation challenges in France
In France, social innovation is defined by article 15 of Law No. 2014-856 of July 31, 2014 on the social and solidarity economy, known as the “Social and Solidarity Economy Act,” as follows:
“I. - Social innovation is defined as a project devised by one or more enterprises which consists of offering products or services with one or more of the following characteristics:
1. Meeting social needs that are unmet or inadequately, whether by existing market conditions or public policy;
2. Meeting social needs by means of an innovative form of enterprise, an innovative production process for goods or services, or an innovative organisation of work. The procedures for consultation on and development of socially innovative projects which involve the beneficiaries of such a project, as well as the funding schemes for such projects, are also considered social innovations.
II. - To be eligible for public funding for social innovation, the innovative nature of the activity must also make it difficult for the business to secure full financing for the activity on the market. This condition does not apply to funding awarded to social innovation projects by local authorities.
III. - The Council for the Social and Solidarity Economy (CSESS) defines guidelines for the characterisation of socially innovative projects or economic activities as defined in I.”
(Légifrance, 2014).
In February 2017, the French Council for the Social and Solidarity Economy (CSESS) proposed a grid for the characterisation of social innovation (CSESS, 2017), as provided for by article 15 of the Social and Solidarity Economy Act. This grid aims to ensure that social innovations are recognised as innovations in their own right and to provide easier access to traditional innovation support and funding schemes. The grid comprises 20 criteria divided into 3 categories (social needs and stakeholder involvement, other positive effects, experimentation and risk-taking) and is designed for entrepreneurial social innovation.
These guidelines for the characterisation of social innovation build on the work begun in 2011 by Avise and Mouves (Avise, 2011).
For the next 5 years, the main challenges involved in better meeting social needs in France will be :
- Covering geographical areas that currently lack support schemes.
- Better sourcing and guiding mature social innovations that have the potential to scale up; developing a structured ability to identify successful experimentations (see the What Works Centres model in England).
- Developing a structured, coordinated scale-up support offer for social innovations that covers all needs nationwide.
- Increasing start-up funding.
- Better mobilising dedicated technological innovation funding schemes, which are underused in France sometimes for technical and often for cultural reasons.
- Facilitating access to European funding, particularly by involving the European Social Fund (ESF+) for social innovation (in France, Priority Area 6 of the national programme for 2021-2027) to focus it on the highest-impact projects.
- Developing an institutionalised, and therefore sustainable, funding model for social innovation support schemes.
- Making the ecosystem (support and funding) easier to understand and boosting its visibility (by raising awareness, providing tools and training, etc.).
- Strengthening the structure of the social innovation support and funding ecosystem by fostering relationships and best practice exchanges between dedicated stakeholders and with generalist support and financing bodies (traditional companies and public-sector stakeholders) to encourage acculturation and increased maturity in social innovation.
- Reinforcing partnerships and cooperation among public-sector stakeholders, SSE stakeholders, researchers, citizens, and private-sector stakeholders; encouraging networking to share best practices and coordinate different stakeholders’ initiatives.
- Working on social innovation as a way to address a social need, which will naturally evolve in terms of both form and support as it grows (from an individual initiative to an SSE to a public policy that generalises it).
- Continuing to build capacity and share a common culture based on assessing the impact of social innovations, which is key to their transformation into systemic innovations.
- Improving the ability to cross-pollinate projects among European countries to move faster together.
- Creating synergies by sharing best practices from projects funded by the ESF+ in different countries or even attempting to replicate those projects in other countries.
- Transferring knowledge between countries; working with the European CCSI and the other 26 CCSIs (particularly to develop study trips).
For more complete reading on these major challenges and to understand the French context, we recommend the report “Mapping and Analysis of the French Social Innovation Ecosystem” produced as part of BuiCaSuS’ WP2 (Avise, 2022).