Recent studies show how big and established social welfare associations play an important role in the creation and dissemination of innovative social services in established welfare states like Germany (Spiess-Knafl, Schües, Richter, Scheuerle, & Schmitz, 2013). Therefore entrepreneurial actors within existing organizations, seem to be at least as important to this debate as founding social entrepreneurs. ‘Social Intrapreneurship’ describes entrepreneurial social value creation and innovation within existing organizations.

New perspectives and practices describe the creation and dissemination of innovation in the social services field by describing the role of social intrapreneurs. But despite the recent, comparative and compelling research results, there is little focus on the organizational level. Specifically the question, how those organizations were able to create innovation remains unanswered.

Therefore this paper addresses the question, how established social service organisations create innovation on an organizational level, by engaging in transitions between social services and universities. 

The paper compares approches to foster innovation in social service organizations in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Based on the results of recent European research projects INNOSERVE and TEPSIE, which looked at the European situation of innovation in the social service field, the paper explores approaches to foster innovation in social services by developing cooperative laboratories (social innovation labs) between universities and socical serivce organizations.

The papers compares the different approaches in a Vienna (Austria), Basel (Switzerland) and Darmstadt (Germany) to establish such collaborative structures, compared methods and practices of collaborations.

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