Codesign in Action: Design Principles to Successfully Manage Transformative Social Innovation

Abstract

To meet grand challenges, organizations must rethink how they establish their objectives and processes in a more sustainable way. Social innovation is seen as a very promising way to respond to this call. Nevertheless, social innovation encounters difficulties in scaling and reaching its transformative power. On the basis of the theoretical framework of transition management, our article focuses on the codesign of transformative social innovation by trying to identify how actors can manage it successfully during the experimentation phase. We have conducted research based on the design science methodology to develop both concrete solutions to solve empirical problems and build strong design propositions. The results and design propositions stem from the analysis of three case studies of French social impact bonds (SIBs), which are contractual tools funding social innovation programs. SIBs are, by nature, codesign processes involving different types of stakeholders (private funders, public commissioners, and nonprofit organizations). This article provides six design principles to support the cooperation and alignment of multiple stakeholders to foster their scaling up, which is crucial for perpetuating social innovation. This research contributes theoretically to both the social innovation scaling literature and the transition management framework and offers practical guidelines to help social practitioners to codesign and manage transformative social innovations.