BACKGROUND Social Innovation in health initiatives have the potential to address unmet community health needs. For sustainable change to occur, we need to understand how and why a given intervention is effective. Bringing together communities, innovators, researchers, and policy makers is a powerful way to address this knowledge gap but differing priorities and epistemological backgrounds can make collaboration challenging. MAIN TEXT To overcome these barriers, stakeholders will need to design policies and work in ways that provide an enabling environment for innovative products and services. Inherently about people, the incorporation of community engagement approaches is necessary for both the development of social innovations and accompanying research methodologies. Whilst the 'appropriate' level of participation is linked to intended outcomes, researchers have a role to play in better understanding how to harness the power of community engagement and to ensure that community perspectives form part of the evidence base that informs policy and practice. CONCLUSIONS To effectively operate at the intersection between policy, social innovation, and research, all collaborators need to enter the process with the mindset of learners, rather than experts. Methods - quantitative and qualitative - must be selected according to research questions. The fields of implementation research, community-based participatory research, and realist research, amongst others, have much to offer. So do other sectors, notably education and business. In all this, researchers must assume the mantel of responsibility for research and not transfer the onus to communities under the guise of participation. By leveraging the expertise and knowledge of different ecosystem actors, we can design responsive health systems that integrate innovative approaches in ways that are greater than the sum of their parts.

中文翻译：

---

研究社会创新：是在摇尾巴吗？

背景 健康倡议中的社会创新具有解决未满足的社区健康需求的潜力。为了发生可持续的变化，我们需要了解特定干预措施如何以及为何有效。将社区、创新者、研究人员和政策制定者聚集在一起是解决这一知识差距的有效方法，但不同的优先事项和认识论背景可能会使合作具有挑战性。正文 为了克服这些障碍，利益相关者需要设计政策并以能够为创新产品和服务提供有利环境的方式开展工作。就人而言，社区参与方法的结合对于社会创新和相关研究方法的发展都是必要的。虽然“适当” 参与水平与预期结果相关联，研究人员可以发挥作用，更好地理解如何利用社区参与的力量，并确保社区观点构成为政策和实践提供信息的证据基础的一部分。结论 为了在政策、社会创新和研究的交叉点上有效运作，所有合作者都需要以学习者而非专家的心态进入这一过程。方法 - 定量和定性 - 必须根据研究问题进行选择。实施研究、基于社区的参与性研究和现实主义研究等领域可以提供很多服务。其他行业也是如此，尤其是教育和商业。在这一切中，研究人员必须承担研究责任，不得以参与为幌子将责任转移给社区。通过利用不同生态系统参与者的专业知识和知识，我们可以设计响应性卫生系统，以大于其部分总和的方式整合创新方法。