The Fog and the Cloud: The emergence and development of social incubators in cities. An analysis of the urban geography of social innovation

The creation and support of an ecosystem of social incubators has been analysed in organizational research with regards to business models, services provided and financial performances’ evaluation (Giordano et al., 2015). How these ecosystems are created, the peculiarity of third sector as well as the role of social innovation is a debated topic in social economy. Social incubators are substantially different from the technological incubators for motivations, relations and processes of the firms and actors involved. They are intrinsically bonded to the local systems where they are usually established by virtue of local institutions. However, the local impacts of these new typology of organizations have not yet been systematically investigated, leaving the topic uncovered by economic geography. Social incubators are located in cities, close or incorporated into knowledge hubs such as universities or in zones with relevant level of inequalities, for developing innovations answering local social needs, engineering social innovation. Community social networks are reproduced to satisfy human needs and social empowerment, their relationship being explained by the geographical perspective of social innovation (Van Dyck and Van den Broeck, 2013). Despite its recognized key role in development, geography approach to social innovation still remain extremely vague (Van Dyck and Van den Broeck, 2013). The objective of this dissertation is to provide a first set of answers to that gap involving the urban environment of the city of Milan and a subsequent comparative case strategy with incubators in Brussels.