Grassroots Innovation Ecosystems

This paper theorises how inclusive grassroots innovation responds to socio-economic inequalities and facilitates efforts to overcome them, contingent on solidaristic relationships. As a mainstream policy concept, the term ‘innovation’ has become more narrowly defined as capital-intensive technological innovation, which has often worsened social inequalities. In response, ‘inclusive innovation’ has become an umbrella term encompassing diverse alternatives seeking to reduce or avoid social inequalities. These have arisen especially in the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE), based on democratic self-management and mutual aid; its enterprises depend on wider ecosystems of support groups. The SSE has some overlaps with Alternative Agri-Food Networks (AAFNs), which build greater social proximity between producers and consumers. Hence the overlap is here called the SSE-AAFNs. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many SSE-AAFNs rapidly adapted to the disruptions through novel practices that could fulfil their members’ needs. SSE-AAFNs ecosystems played this creative role through three general parameters: inclusive grassroots innovation, agile adaptations, and a transformative resilience bouncing forwards. These parameters form a tripartite framework that helps to analyse case studies of SSE-AAFNs in Brazil and Turkey. In both cases, grassroots innovation helped to overcome social inequalities (of class, race, gender), in ways contingent on each initiative and its context. SSE-AAFNs have demanded and gained support measures from municipalities, along lines helping to build collective capacities rather than dependence. The tripartite analytical framework here has wider relevance to SSE ecosystems developing grassroots innovation which can overcome inequalities.