In November 2018, Carlos Moedas, who was then the EU's commissioner in charge of research, science and technology, gave a fulsome endorsement of social innovation: ‘In the European Union’, he said, ‘we are going to put more money into social innovation, not because it's trendy, but because we believe that the future of innovation is about social innovation.’

His words signalled an important shift. Social innovation is not a new concept or practice, but it has become increasingly part of the mainstream. There are now hundreds of social innovation centres, funds, courses and incubators of all kinds, most of which didn't exist in the 2000s. Here I attempt an overview of what was achieved during the 2010s, what's missing and what might be priorities for the 2020s, in what, despite Moedas's comments, could be a much less favourable political climate in many countries.

In the mid-2000s I co-wrote a report, titled Social Silicon Valleys, which tried to set out a roadmap for social innovation. At the time I was part of a group trying to build on what had been achieved in supporting social entrepreneurship and social enterprise, using a more systematic approach to social change that didn't over-fetishise the heroic individual entrepreneur and that recognised the role that governments could play. The report made a series of recommendations, calling for:

• new sources of finance, including public and philanthropic investment in high-risk R&D, targeted at the areas of greatest need and greatest potential;

• more open markets for social solutions, including public funding and services directed more to outcomes and opened up to social enterprises and user groups as well as private business;

• new kinds of incubator for promising models, and ‘accelerators’ to advance innovation in areas such as chronic disease or the cultivation of non-cognitive skills;

• new ways of empowering users to drive innovation themselves – with tools, incentives, recognition and access to funding for ideas that work;

• new institutions to orchestrate more systemic change in fields like climate change or welfare – linking small-scale social enterprises and projects to big institutions, laws and regulations;

• new institutions focused on adapting new technologies for their social potential – such as AI – as well as more extensive, rigorous, imaginative and historically aware research on how social innovation happens and how it can be helped.