Social Impact Measurement in Incremental Social Innovation

While social innovation is a growing phenomenon, social impact measurement has also become an important practice in the domain of social innovation. It is because social innovation initiatives are usually funded and those who execute the initiatives are usually held accountable to the funders. There are many approaches to social impact measurement in social innovation and no professional standards need to be adhered to. It is up to those who fund and those who are funded to come up with a consensus on what should be measured in the social impact measurement (SIM) exercise. Also, little research has focused on the conceptual nature of social impact measurement in the domain of social innovation. To fill this gap in the literature, an exploratory study was conducted in a bid to reveal theoretical insight into the conceptual nature of SIM in the domain of social innovation. This study makes a reference to Nicholls’ three levels of social innovation in decomposing social innovation. This paper proposes that utilization-focused evaluation be used as a conceptual principle of social impact measurement in incremental social innovation.