Following the studies led by BEPA since 2009, a wide number of European Commission Directorates General (DGs) is involved in social innovation. Today, DG Employment, social affairs and inclusion and DG REGIO are about to publish guidelines on social innovation supported by the ERDF and the ESF. DG Enterprises and industry deals with social innovation in the workplace and launched a European Prize on social innovation. DG Research and innovation put societal issues at the heart of its future Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (“Horizon 2020”) and DG internal market and services published by the end of 2011 its “Social enterprises” package.

Finally, among its proposals for the 2014-2020 programming period, the European Commission proposed a Programme for Social Change and Innovation with a specific budget for social innovation and experimentation. Local and regional public authorities also have an important role to play. They have long been occupying the field of support for innovation and the social economy sector. One of the main challenges is to combine and make better use of traditional tools of support for innovation and tools that are specifically aimed at innovation with societal ends in order to have a more efficient financing of social innovation. At a time when the Ile-de-France Region is finalizing a new scheme dedicated to social innovation in the social economy sector, our workshop will deal with the following issues: - What is social innovation? What are its features? What hinders its development? How can support for social entrepreneurs and social innovation be improved? - Is social innovation tied to local and regional levels? What are the best practices at the regional level? What are the European initiatives and how can we find complementarity between the various levels of intervention? - How can we facilitate the change in scale and how can projects of a wider dimension from actions with local/regional impact be carried out?