Social Innovation inivatives turn out to be transformative to the extent to which the “dominance of existing institutions is being challenged, altered, or replaced” (Haxeltine et al. 2017, p.8) and the extend of change often depends upon the interconnection of SI Initiatives. Participation in a network - usually locally rooted and transnationally connected - can increase SI actors’ motivation, knowledge, and sense of identity (ibid., p.6ff.). Network relations can increase the degree of institutionalization and access to resources, compensate unsteady and insecure environments and support adjusting their operations, it provides legitimacy, knowledge sharing, learning, and peer support. Due to the multi-level approach, we understand network formation on the policy level as formation of advocacy coalitions (Sabatier 1993), which allows to analyze the network processes over longer periods. Further, the network formation constitutes a lab-specific ecosystem of social investment to mobilize a variety of resources for care innovation on the regional level. This existing structure permits identifying and analyzing specific resources for innovation in care sector and compare them on the European level. The paper will present the research design, including a methodological approach, based on critical turning points (Pel et al. 2017). We will use a German case example (the network relations of one social innovation lab) to demonstrate the application of the transformative social innovation research approach on the field of home care.

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