The BC Advisory Council on Social Entrepreneurship was established to explore how social innovation might enhance and increase citizens’ capacity to take care of each other in the future.  Their key question work was: How can we use social innovation (and its corresponding tools of social enterprise, social media, open source, smart collaborative networks and social finance) to enable a resilient British Columbia in 2020?

In an early discussion paper entitled, Taking Care, The Council described Social Innovation as a means being intentional about:

• Cultivating and supporting new approaches that work
• Aligning existing expertise and experience in new ways
• Using the expertise and resources of all sectors (business, community and government)
• Adopting an entrepreneurial, business oriented approach to achieving social impact
• Linking innovations with structural, institutional and systemic change

Its subsequent paper, Together: Respecting Our Future defined social innovations as, “ideas, products, services, processes, statutes, resources, protocols, and technologies that solve a social problem while generating new social relationships, partnerships, collaborations, connections and financing.”  And, it also acknowledges that, around the world, social innovation has emerged as a “frame of reference for action to address existing and emerging social, financial and environmental challenges.”

The Council’s final report, Action Plan Recommendations to Maximize Social Innovation in British Columbia, culminates its comprehensive, province-wide process with a set of recommendations and suggested framework to enable social innovation to flourish in British Columbia. The Council and its work also inspire others in the growing field of social innovation.