Social Innovation Process Based On Stakeholder Network: A Multi-case Study

In the increasingly complex and diverse social problems,Social Innovation has become a global popular concept and mainstream phenomenon.Social innovation refers to the practice process that the government,enterprises and society creatively or independently integrate and utilize social resources and solve social problems or meet social needs through new ways or means.Social innovation pursues dual goals of economy and society,and the participants are heterogeneous and dynamic.It is necessary to introduce the perspective of stakeholder network to study the process of social innovation.This research starts from the perspective of stakeholder network,not only concerned about the attributes of stakeholder network structure,but also pay attention to stakeholders and relational attributes,to identify the stakeholders of each stage of the process of social innovation,analysis,cyber source relations,for each stage,open the "creative generation and creative design evaluation with the development of the implementation and diffusion process of social innovation in order to" black box.Firstly,on the basis of literature review,the stakeholder theory and social network theory are integrated to construct the social innovation process based on the stakeholders’ attributes,relationship attributes and network attributes.Then,using the method of case study,select the Hangzhou city garbage recycling project-Zhejiang nine warehouse "Hugo Recycling","Green Zhejiang wisdom green house project,Qinghe community garbage recycling project,through the analysis of resources,relationship and structure of different stages of stakeholder networks,analysis of the specific process of social innovation.Finally,a case study is conducted to summarize the differences between social innovation process model and social innovation process dominated by different subjects.Through the above research,the main conclusions are as follows:First,the process of social innovation is divided into four stages:creative generation,creative evaluation,design and development,implementation and diffusion.The creative stage needs to be highly sensitive to social problems or social needs,to grasp social opportunities,to analyze social problems,and to produce initial creativity.Compliance assessment,social assessment,and commercial assessment are needed in the creative assessment phase.In the design and development stage,we should pay attention to the development of the whole business process.The implementation and diffusion stage needs to improve the recognition degree of stakeholders to social innovation projects.Second,resources are the most important elements in the process of social innovation,and the access to resources determines the effect of social innovation.There are four kinds of resources available in the network of social innovation stakeholders:institutional resources,social support resources,business resources,and material resources.Among them,the creative generation of social support and institutional resources are the core resources,the main creative evaluation system resources,social support resources,business resources,design and development of business resources and material resources are key resources,implementation stage and diffusion,social support resources,system resources,business resources and material resources have an important effect.Third,the social innovation led by different subjects has different preferences and dependence on resources in the network,and also causes the differences of the stakeholders network.The social innovation led by enterprises pays more attention to the system resources and social support resources from the network,and the social innovation led by social organizations pays more attention to the acquisition of material resources and business resources from the network,while the government led social innovation pays more attention to the business resources.Fourth,when the main body of social innovation resources required to master the key stage,which occupies a central position in the network,leading and controlling the development of the project;when the subject to a high degree of resource dependence and must be obtained from the external network,the center of the external stakeholders will increase,and even the formation of a new network subgroup;when the subject needs to obtain resources from outside multiple stakeholders,the network density will thus increase,to meet the demands of stakeholders to achieve cooperation.