Introduction: social innovation and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

David C. Littlewood, Irene Garnelo-Gomez, Laurel Steinfield and Giacomo Ciambotti

Chapter 1 in The Elgar Companion to Social Innovation and the Sustainable Development Goals, 2026, pp 1-39 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Social innovation has an important role to play in achieving the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, knowledge of how, where, and even if this occurs remains limited and scattered across disciplines. This Edward Elgar Companion aims to contribute to addressing this problem, providing scholarly insights and implications for policy and practice. This chapter introduces the Companion. It begins by reviewing and positioning the Companion and its chapters in the context of extant literature, debates, and practice. This includes defining key terms―particularly social innovation. We propose a novel ‘propeller’ conceptualization of social innovation and the SDGs, which constitutes a key scholarly contribution of the chapter and which we use to structure the rest of the Companion. We conclude the chapter by introducing the different chapters in the book and offering possible directions for future scholarship.

Keywords: Social innovation; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); Economy; Environment; Society (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035326037
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