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The conservation stage of the lifecycle involves the establishment of new norms, skills and efficiencies. Suggested policy options are those that offer approaches for institutionalising the innovation, ‘scaling up’ activities, and preparing to be resilient in the face of the next disturbance (Moore et al. 2012).

i) Institutionalising social innovation within regional development

priorities and initiatives

The Basque region faces major social challenges and public problems - such as an aging population, globalisation, changing technology and environmental sustainability. In this climate, the potential to generate economic growth and jobs, and to assist the region maintain high levels of wellbeing and a strong social commitment, are key policy objectives. Innobasque, the Basque Agency for Innovation, is a not-for-profit organisation established in 2007 to coordinate and promote innovation across the region and across all sectors. Innobasque’s broad role is to facilitate networking, support policy development and improve understanding of innovation and its processes. A joint interview was held with the Social Innovation Program Director, the Innobasque Social Innovation Program Officer, and a Project Officer from the Matia Foundation (a program partner).47 _{The interviews took place at the Innobasque office in Bilbao Spain.}

With over 1000 members from public agencies, research institutions, private companies, unions, and not-for-profit organisations Innobasque is jointly funded through public and private sector contributions, and through earned income from its projects. It is an innovative public-private leadership initiative that builds on the region’s strong tradition of collaboration, and performs a key role in shaping public sector policy for the region.

Innobasque Social Innovation is a program stream within Innobasque. It represents a significant system level approach to altering hierarchies that often exist between commercial and social economy sector-based development initiatives, and to reframing the significance of socio-economic issues affecting the region. The Innobasque Social Innovation approach recognises that learning and commitment at the local level are key to building the social movements that will improve or transform socio-economic issues. It is therefore based on three ‘pillars of participation’ designed to improve social relations at different levels: participation by local agents, guided by the principle of subsidiarity; empowerment and citizen commitment; and bottom-up processes. Their approach demonstrates that developing new norms and skills in these areas can be facilitated by public sector entities interested in building the capacity of its citizens and institutions. the Innobasque Social Innovation team, which was relatively new at the time of interview, aims to achieve its goals through assisting and promoting social innovation assemblages that involve participatory governance and cross-sector alliances.

The Innobasque Social Innovation program has been integrated into Innobasque’s broader regional development strategy and through this into the region’s public sector policy trajectories. In this way, it is intended to stimulate activity in the disruptive domain of social change. This broader strategy actively supports and promotes enterprises from across the diverse economy to contribute to the jointly agreed and shared vision of socio-economic transformation. The multi-faceted approach is generating strategic and proactive responses to complex social challenges, improving the resilience of the region by disrupting otherwise projected trajectories of increasing unemployment and

economic decline, and diffusing its approach through enrolling the widest possible cross-section of actors. By making social innovation ‘everyone’s business’ Innobasque and its public sector partners are establishing a sophisticated approach to conserving the progress made on local economic development to date – whilst also fostering the relationships that will underpin resilience in the face of further disruptions in the region.

ii) Normalising the social economy as an economic actor

The Chantier de L’Economie Sociale (Chantier) is an independent not-for-profit organisation that was formally established in 1999. It is a network of networks that includes cooperatives and non-profits, social movements (such as the union movement, the women’s movement and others), and local community economic

development organisations. The long-term Executive Director of the Chantier was interviewed for this study , in her office in Montreal, Canada .48

At the time of interview, the Chantier had 12 core staff who draw on a broad range of input provided through various committees and working groups. Chantier’s mission is to: promote the social economy; support the consolidation, experimentation and elaboration of new projects and fields; encourage consultation between the diverse participants of the social economy; ensure the sector is represented within the public domain; and through this shift frames of reference to establish the pluralistic nature of the economy as the norm. In essence, the Chantier’s purpose is to be an agent of the conservation stage – embedding new norms, building capacities, and growing and strengthening the work of the sector at the broadest level.

Today, Chantier is fully integrated into Quebec’s institutional systems and processes. It is acknowledged by governments and other social movements as the central voice for the social economy across the province, and as an important contributor to the creation and delivery of government policy. In its participatory

48 _{Other sources drawn on: Neamtan 2004; Chantier de l’Economie Sociale 2005; Elson 2008;}

governance role Chantier represents Quebec’s social economy – which is a significant economic actor, consisting of over 7 000 enterprises that are active in 20 industry sectors (such as arts and culture, food, retail, environment, collective property, leisure and tourism, information technology and communications, media, manufacturing, personal services etc.) which together employ more than 150 000 people and generate a turnover of more than CAD $17 billion per annum in revenue (about eight percent of Quebec’s GDP).

In 2008, the Quebec Government’s five-year action plan also institutionalised a pathway for scaling up social economy development through a structured support program. Chantier has been the major partner in delivering this agenda - providing access to quality information and resources, forging strategic partnerships, developing research agendas, informing policy, and establishing bespoke programs that support the unique development needs of the social economy. Chantier has driven innovation and skills development in many practical aspects of social economy enterprise development - including public policy; new investment tools such as patient capital funds and pre-start up financing; new legal structures; new approaches to unionisation; and new approaches to developing markets.

In this multi-faceted approach Chantier is using incremental service and product activity domain processes, combined with market re-shaping institutional processes to bring about disruptive social change. As a ‘network of networks’ it diffuses its approach to sector capacity building through its members and partners, supporting them to adapt tools, techniques and training in ways that will make them most useful to their own constituents.

Due to their size and stability, many social economy organisations are now seen as an attractive market to mainstream businesses, demonstrating the success of the multi-faceted and long-running capacity building strategies. The broader normalising effect of this can be seen in the recent introduction of products and services tailored for the social economy by commercial entities. These are in competition with those offered by Chantier - for example, patient capital products

and asset development financing. Social economy organisations now have choices that previously did not exist and this has created disturbances for Chantier on a number of fronts, demonstrating that innovation does not stop at the conservation stage but enters into new phases that require further resilience and adaptability.

In 2013 ‘framework legislation’ was passed through the National Assembly. As a result, an ongoing committee focused on the social economy has been established and Chantier’s role in this has been formalised, recognising the importance of its leadership and preparing the ground for the next stage of development. This next stage was already requiring Chantier to re-enter the release phase of the adaptive cycle in some areas of its operations, as the normalisation of the social economy disrupts and reconfigures its traditional markets.

3.2 ‘User-group’ responses: Reality testing the frameworks

In this section I discuss the feedback that two ‘user groups’ provided on the language tools introduced above. The initial framework for characterising social innovation assemblages presented to both groups was similar in content to that discussed above and the final configuration of the frameworks, as presented above, was developed based on the input of the ‘user groups’ and further analysis of the cases.

Public sector agencies are often risk averse and therefore suggesting that things be done differently, or that different things could be done, can be met with a bland response at best. I was, therefore, surprised by the readiness of the focus group participants to consider the nuanced perspectives presented by the two frameworks and the language tools they offered. As the quotes and discussion below demonstrate the subjectivities of the individual policymakers themselves appeared to shift in some small way as they became familiar with the contextually relevant language I presented them with,