政府领导的社会创新: 以上海市政府发起的公益创投为例

In recent years, "managed social innovation" emerged in China where local governments take the lead in generating and implementing citizen-oriented new social products,processes,and services.The central government has embraced these local innovative activities as part of its’ harmonious society’ strategy.The aim is to not only accommodate but also craft civil society initiatives.However,questions remain why the governments have actively engineered social innovations and how and to what extent they can be successful in balancing potential conflicts between their own pursuits and those initiated by citizens.In this article,we examine a hybrid form of social innovation combining government engineering and citizen participation as the Chinese government’s most recent strategy in coping with the rise of nonprofit organizations.We studied case a case of social innovation——the government-sponsored venture philanthropy program in Shanghai,and find that managed social innovation have actually had mixed results.On the one hand,it genuinely empowered citizens and provided opportunities for innovation and new developments,and on the other,restrictions and limits are still prevalent preventing further social innovation.A lot more need to be done to further deepening reform to facilitate social innovations.