There is an urgent need to address the interconnected ecological, economic, and social challenges of our time. Social innovations have the potential to drive such societal change by acting out, or, ‘prefiguring’, ways of doing, thinking, and organizing that they long to see in the future. Yet, as they diffuse, scale, or mainstream in an attempt to become transformative, they face a paradox: To what extent do they actually disrupt systems, or reproduce existing structures instead?

In POTRANSI, we address this innovation paradox from a power perspective, asking:

• Who, or what exercises and undergoes power through social innovation? 
• How do existing power relations change – and how might they be reproduced?
• What are unintended power implications? 
• How can social innovations gain power while holding on to their transformative potential?

To answer these questions we develop a theoretical power framework by building on existing insights on power, as well as on empirical research across the United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Portugal in our case studies. In addition, we organize a Transformative Power Arena – an action research method to collaborate with entrepreneurs, activists, policy-makers, and citizens involved in social innovation across Europe.

Using action research, we experiment with new methods to collaborate in transdisciplinary settings, for instance inspired by Theatre of the Oppressed. As such we aim to not just talk about power, but to also use other ways of expression to facilitate interaction. One of POTRANSI’s missions is to increase power literacy: to foster a critical and informed debate about the role of power in social innovation – placing it at the center of discussions on transformations, where it has often been overlooked.