Towards a new definition of social innovation

Purpose - This paper focuses on social innovation, a topic that the literature has been increasingly discussing in the last decade. We revise the many available (and, to some extent, too general) definitions as well as identify the main features that have been claimed as relevant for social innovation (e.g. Mumford, 2002), which, due to this, concur in defining it. By doing so, we pursue the assessment of a less fuzzy definition of social innovation and make a first attempt to focus on the role (in terms of profile and task/s) that companies play in developing as well as scaling social innovations. Design/methodology/approach - The adopted approach exploits the literature review and is based on an in-depth analysis of the definitions of social innovation: we collected and catalogued them, so identifying the main dimensions of analysis. Originality/value - The paper contributes to clarify the concept of social innovation, which, in our opinion and to our knowledge, remains somehow vague in the literature. Practical implications - Clarifying what social innovation is and if/how companies have been involved in social innovation initiatives can increase companies' awareness of what they (can) do with respect to social innovation, possibly taking advantage of this in terms of business objectives. Among the questions that our paper may help address: which subjects are involved in social innovation processes?