SOCIAL INNOVATION EXCHANGE

Their core work

Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) is a global network organization that connects social innovators, policymakers, and researchers to spread and scale social innovation practices. Their core work involves facilitating knowledge exchange, building practitioner communities, and translating research insights into policy-relevant learning. In H2020, they contributed by mobilizing their international network to support community engagement, policy experimentation, and the integration of civil society perspectives into research programs. They function as a bridge between academic research and real-world social change practice.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

SIX entered H2020 with a clear community-building and network focus — the SIC project (2016-2019) centered on engagement, experimentation, learning, and policy activities, all hallmarks of a practitioner network mobilizing around social innovation. Their second project, SCALINGS (2018-2021), shifted toward the science-society interface, specifically co-creation methodologies and the conditions under which civic participation in research can scale. This suggests a gradual move from convening practitioners to theorizing and studying the mechanisms of social innovation itself. With only two projects and no recent keyword data, the trajectory is suggestive but not conclusive.

SIX appears to be moving from pure network facilitation toward a more research-informed role — contributing expertise on co-creation methodology and science-society integration, which would make them a relevant partner for Horizon Europe missions requiring citizen and community engagement.

How they like to work

SIX has participated exclusively as a consortium partner, never as coordinator, across both H2020 projects — a pattern consistent with an NGO that contributes network access and stakeholder engagement capacity rather than leading technical research agendas. Their 24 unique partners across 12 countries from just 2 projects suggests they operate within diverse, multi-actor consortia rather than a fixed recurring group. This profile makes them a flexible partner for projects needing civil society reach, but organizations seeking a technically leading counterpart should look elsewhere.

SIX has worked with 24 distinct consortium partners spanning 12 countries, a notably broad reach for only 2 projects, reflecting their identity as a network organization with pre-existing connections across Europe and beyond. No single geographic cluster dominates, which is consistent with their global network positioning.

What sets them apart

SIX occupies a rare position as a practitioner-facing network organization with credibility in both the policy world and the social innovation research community — they are neither a university nor a consultancy, but a convener with an established global membership base. For consortium builders working on societal challenges, responsible research and innovation (RRI), or co-creation methodologies, SIX offers something most academic partners cannot: direct access to practitioners, social entrepreneurs, and civic organizations across multiple countries. Their value is relational and reputational rather than technical, which makes them best suited for projects that genuinely need society embedded in the work, not just listed on the cover page.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SIC
  Largest funded project for SIX (€423,816) and the clearest demonstration of their core competency — building a pan-European social innovation community with policy engagement and experimentation at its center.
• SCALINGS
  Represents a thematic expansion into science-society co-creation research, showing SIX's capacity to contribute to RIA-type projects that study the conditions for scaling civic participation in innovation.