Alex Nicholls and Alex Murdock have assembled a remarkable collection of papers largely from the first International Social Innovation Conference at the University of Oxford’s Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship (Saïd Business School). In one sense, then, this collection of papers has the rough edges of a conference proceedings. But this book is much more than that as it is also exceedingly rich in theoretical development, detailed case studies and overall coherence, much like a research handbook. Specifically, the book offers unique insights into the micro-foundations of social innovation, not just what large-scale social innovation looks like but the inner processes of how and why large-scale innovation has occurred. Moreover, several of the papers, particularly in the second half of the book, also provide different explanations for the overlapping logics and interdisciplinary implications of social innovation in civil society, public policy, and the environment.

Nicholls and Murdock’s introductory chapter plus the four papers of Part I consolidate and advance theory-building for research into social entrepreneurship and social innovation by offering insights into the micro-foundations of social innovation. Nicholls and Murdock’s “The Nature of Social Innovation” nominate social innovation as the next Schumpeterian (i.e., massive) socio-historical revolution in modern history. The book “concerns itself with social innovation as a ‘sixth wave’ of macro-level change and suggests that it has the potential to be as disruptive and influential as the technological-economic waves that went before” (p. 2). Nicholls and Murdock then break down the coming Social Innovation sixth wave into not only the well-established levels of “incremental” and “disruptive” change but also add a new “meso” level of “institutional” change that seeks “to reconfigure existing market structures and patterns to create new social value” (p. 4). Ultimately, social innovation at all three levels consists of “varying levels of deliberative change that aim to address suboptimal issues in the production, availability, and consumption of public goods defined as that which is broadly of societal benefit within a particular normative and culturally contingent context” (p. 7).

The four essays of Part I advance the theory-building still farther. Geoff Mulgan’s conceives of the material that social innovation alters: the plasticity of society. “In short,” Mulgan writes, “the foundation of social innovation is a belief in people’s capacity to create, to shape and experiment, in tension with the present, but also with a bias against both over-confident top down control, and the fatalistic view that nothing works” (p. 39). Next, Janelle Kerlin’s comparative study focuses on the cultural influences on social innovation “in the guise of social enterprise in different world regions as a shared, human-focused approach that draws on the institutional resources and culture of a given environment to address specific needs” (p. 66).

Michele-Lee Moore et al.’s chapter uses Resilience Theory and a case study of economic development policies for the Arctic Inuit to understand how policy interventions at different phases of the lifecycle of a given social innovation can accelerate its diffusion and amplify its effects. In the fourth chapter of Part I, Michel Marée and Sybille Mertens grapple with the fundamental problem: “How can we assess the performance of an organization when a part of its production is non-market, that is to say not-mediated by prices? [sic]” (p. 114). The chapter then goes into a long, fairly standard discursion on the limits of rationality and rational-choice theory and tries to draw a distinction between accounting and economic value. Yet, taken collectively, Nicholls and Murdock’s introductory chapter and the four chapters of Part I cover a remarkable amount of theory-building ground and, in so doing, illuminate the micro-foundations of social innovation better than any single volume that this reviewer has seen in the field.

Yet, that is only slightly less than half of Nicholls and Murdock’s edited book. With some linkages back to the first half of the book, the four chapters of Part II and the three chapters of Part III provide different explanations for the overlapping logics and interdisciplinary implications of social innovation in civil society and the governmental sector. Michele-Lee Moore et al. introduce this topic when they posit that “government has a role to play in catalyzing social innovation through public policy” (p. 93). The chapters of Parts II and III then branch out on this topic in a variety of ways. In Fergus Lyon’s own words, his paper “sheds more light on the relationships between public and third sectors, demonstrating the overlapping nature of these spheres” (p. 140). Kirsten Robinson et al. give another rich theoretical perspective on how social innovation works across sectors and from the bottom-up. “Unlike the traditional problem of designing policy-level changes that are implemented at the level of society,” they conclude, “these changes began with small and local innovations” (p. 174).

The remaining chapters explore uncharted waters in the overlapping logics and interdisciplinary implications of social innovation. Randy M. Ataide’s conceptualizes the “socio-religious entrepreneur and innovator” in which religious values mingle with social innovations. Heather Cameron proffers the fascinating Foucauldian idea of the “specific intellectual” who is “part of a system rather than as a discrete individual” (p. 203).

The three chapters of Part III engage the timely topic of the social innovation with respect to the environment. Per Olsson and Victor Galaz join social innovation and entrepreneurship with, again, Resilience Theory in order to devise “new strategies, concepts, ideas, institutions, and organizations that enhances the capacity of ecosystems to generate services” (p. 239). Benedetto Cannatelli et al.’s paper apply five criteria from behavioral theory—prevalence, relevance, urgency, accessibility, and radicalness—“to a single case study [that of Greentecho, S.A. of Switzerland] to explore aspects of the opportunity identification process… [that is] likely to engender trade-offs in the identification of opportunities according to social, economic, and environmental rationalities” (p. 264). Kai Hockerts and Rolf Wüstenhagen develop the concept of “sustainable entrepreneurship” involving the co-evolution of “Davids” (small firms, often start-ups) and “Goliaths” (large incumbent firms).

In sum, the book will interest any researcher or student following the theoretical development of the field of social entrepreneurship.