Table 1 Qualities of social innovation initiatives

Needs-based

Social innovations are explicitly designed to meet the contextual and social needs of the people or its intended user in order to improve their quality of life or wellbeing [13, 16,17,18,19].

Bottom-up participation

Social innovations are co-created and implemented through participation by different actors from the bottom-up and across disciplinary or organisational boundaries [20,21,22,23,24,25].

Qualities

Social innovations are more effective, efficient, sustainable or just than existing solutions [19].

Capacitating

Social innovations empower people to create new roles, establish relationships and develop assets and capabilities for better utilisation of resources [26].

Systems changing

Social innovations change the institutional and structural arrangements within established systems [27, 28].