Emotions as the glue, the fuel and the rust of social innovation

In this chapter the authors explore the emergent literature on social innovation and make ties to the affective underpinnings of these activities. Referencing a typology of social innovation developed by Tracey and Stott in 2017 outlining three major types of social innovation – social entrepreneurship, social intrapreneurship and social extrapreneurship – the authors draw on three metaphors to examine the role of emotions in social innovation: emotions as fuel, emotions as glue and emotions as rust. They develop the metaphors theoretically, reviewing relevant literature on social innovation, and then use the metaphors to derive a research agenda for each type of social innovation. The authors conclude the chapter with a call for future work in this important domain of scholarship.