Zooming Out and Zooming In: Studying Social Innovation Through Systems Thinking and Leverage Points

Social innovation involves the novel reconfiguration of resources and ideas to address significant social challenges. To map associated complexities and interdependencies and develop more effective interventions, social innovators are increasingly adopting a systems approach and related tools. Although management scholars have celebrated the practical use of such tools, they have been slow to adopt them to methodologically and theoretically advance the study of social innovation. Therefore, we ask: How might systems thinking help advance scholarship on social innovation? We first review extant scholarship on social innovation, highlighting areas where some methodological and theoretical progress has been made toward developing a more dynamic systems approach. Specifically, we consider scholars’ previous efforts to capture, analyze, and theorize multi-level and non-linear relationships involved in social innovation, as well as the intended and unanticipated effects of associated interventions. Second, we highlight how effectively applying systems thinking to social innovation research requires sequentially zooming out and zooming in to ensure parsimony in the design, data collection, and analysis stages of the research process. We offer methodological guidance and examples of tools that can be used to apply systems thinking to better capture, analyze, and theorize the complexities of social innovation.