History has proved that innovation is becoming more and more a critical factor in terms of the development of productivity and the progression of a country. China is trying to build itself as an innovation nation to hook into its own concerns surrounding the need for an improved harmonious society and people centred development.

Social innovation is how cities, national governments and business solve compelling challenges facing the society- such as urban growth, traffic congestion, an ageing population, chronic disease and unemployment – by designing and developing new and more effective approaches.

In light of this, the China Centre for Comparative Politics and Economics, the Young Foundation and the British Council are working together to organise a 3-year Social Innovation Project. This project focuses on social innovation because of its critical importance both to the West and to China; because it is a field in rapid development, at roughly the point where ideas around corporate social responsibility, creative industries and social enterprise were a decade or two ago; and because it offers the prospect of rapid impact on the ground. The aim of the project is to share learning between the UK and China on how to advance social innovation to address pressing social challenges in fields such as health, education and ageing.

The project outputs will include new approaches to social policy; practical innovations that can be replicated across China; new ideas that can help UK cities; a more sophisticated involvement of business in social issues; dissemination through the key leadership development organisations in China and the UK.  The broader objective is to spread the idea of social innovation and to contribute to speeding up successful innovation to address social challenges, in particular with closer involvement of business, technologists and policy makers。

As a first milestone of China-UK Social Innovation project, a first-ever Social Innovation International Conference has been successfully held on 16-17 October 2006 in Beijing. The conference brought together representatives from over 15 countries including Brazil, India, Italy, Denmark, USA and Mexico as well as leading politicians from China and the UK at national, regional and municipal level, alongside the world leading experts and practitioners in this field. Representatives from leading multinational businesses involved in practical innovation and academics specialising in social innovation were also represented. More than 200 people attended the conference. The conference achieved big media coverage, being reported by 40 media, including many authoritative media, such as CCTV, BTV, China Daily, People’s Daily and China Government Net.

In order to promote the International Conference on Social Innovation, we organised a series of activities:

• A Beijing TV crew was sent to UK in July and filmed several successful social innovation cases in the UK. Four episodes programme had been screened on TV before the conference.
• The “Call for Papers on Social Innovation” competition had been held from April to August 2006, received almost 300 papers by the end of August, and had a “Call for Papers Rewarding Ceremony” on 20th September.
• A website for the project was launched at the end of April 2006, and this is being populated with practical examples from around the world, and in particular from China. You could find all the conference materials and participants information on www.discoversocialinnovation.org.

Inspired by the successful Social Innovation International Conference we are working with Chinese organisations on the following areas to push forward social innovation in China.

• Community development and social economy. This is led by British Council Beijing office.  It will explore how social innovation at neighbourhood level works to meet the diversified needs from the residents in Beijing. It will look at the role of social enterprises in this area in particular.
• Social Housing. British Council Guangzhou office partners VanKe Group (a property developer) to explore different models of social housing and try to provide Chinese government possible innovative social housing solutions.
• Sustainable social welfare. British Council Chongqing office is developing a sustainable social welfare programme with the local bureau of civil affairs.
• Social entrepreneurship. A member of Track 2000 has been invited by British Council Shanghai office to spend one month in Ningbo sharing his experience of social enterprise with local social entrepreneurs.