In and Out of Sync is about how private and third sector organisations innovate to respond to social needs.

Key findings:

• This report’s case studies highlight four conditions for putting innovative products, services and models into practice sustainably and on a large scale.
• These are effective demand, effective supply, effective strategies, and learning and adaptation.
• The social innovation system has several weaknesses, including undeveloped markets and labour pools, and fragile markets for the results of social innovation.
• Priorities for improving the scaling-up and spread of social innovations include: making more mature sources of finance available, and creating more developed exchanges and intermediaries.

This report seeks to explain why certain social innovations grow and why others don’t. It tracks many of those reasons back to the environment in which the innovation exists – how much demand there is for it.

To improve the odds of success, we need to offer specialist sources of support – including flexible financing that can accommodate risk-taking when necessary. It's also important that we build a stronger knowledge and experience base in the field of social innovation.

Authors:

Geoff Mulgan with Rushanara Ali, Richard Halkett and Ben Sanders