Abstract. Social innovation is a relatively new analysis subject when it comes to the development of the theoretical approaches which rend the projected social development possible and efficient, but also within the context of other approaches which put emphasis on dispersed knowledge, decentralization and the capacity of communities and social groups to self-organize and formulate specific and new solutions to the issues they are dealing with. When conceptualizing social innovation there is a difficulty in transferring its common meaning, usually linked to particular science and technological cases. In this study, we propose a systematic approach of defining the concept of social innovation, from the perspective of social economy.

Keywords: social innovation, social innovating, social reality.