Note From the Editors

IslandWood is a 255-acre outdoor learning center located on Bainbridge Island in the state of Washington. Its motto states that visitors can “Disengage to engage. Disconnect to connect. Retreat to advance” (IslandWood, 2016). This remote and rustic setting has played host to some of the most stimulating and progressive roundtables that have occurred in the field of social work during the last decade. The first roundtable was convened by the University of Southern California (USC) School of Social Work in response to John Brekke’s (2011) Aaron Rosen Lecture at the Society for Social Work and Research on promoting the science of social work. During the past 5 years, numerous roundtables have been hosted at IslandWood to discuss the science of social work and the future of social work doctoral education.

Much like the Asilomar Conference changed the field of biomedical research with its guidelines for recombinant DNA, the Berkshire Conference changed the role of women working in the field of history, and the Boulder Model of clinical psychology training emerged from the Boulder Conference, IslandWood has served as the place to envision new initiatives for the field of social work. For the profession of social work, IslandWood is the place where the future of the field is discussed; challenges are deconstructed; and innovations in practice, research, and policy are planned.

In 2015, the USC School of Social Work introduced a new roundtable to IslandWood. With so much peripheral focus on innovation in the other roundtables, we decided it was time to have a roundtable devoted exclusively to the topic of innovation in social work. The goal of the Social Work Innovation Roundtable was to rigorously discuss the role of innovation in social work science and research. To this end, we broke the mold on the format used for the Science of Social Work Roundtable and the Doctoral Education Roundtable by convening a group of senior scholars in the field of social work along with emerging scholars (doctoral students and early career professors or researchers) to debate the practice of innovation, the nature of innovation, and how innovation may move social work forward. We noted that although the National Institutes of Health had included innovation as part of the requirements of new grants, many scientists still struggle with defining innovation relative to scientific advancement. We posed the following questions to presenters and discussants: (1) Is innovation the enemy of science? (2) Does innovation have a role in science? and (3) Are innovation and scientific ideas simply different?

During the course of 2 days, we argued over different perspectives on science and innovation with our colleagues. Out of those debates, this special issue of Research on Social Work Practice emerged. The papers that constitute this special issue address innovation in social work from a variety of perspectives. Marilyn Flynn’s paper sets the stage for the rest of the issue by discussing the tension between social work and social innovation. Social work has been grounded in social science and the scientific method and values incremental advancement and rigor, whereas social innovation values rapid breakthroughs and the market. She suggests that a merger of these two perspectives, although difficult, could be of great benefit to both spaces. Halvorsen provides a response to Flynn by putting forth the hope that high expectations of rigor in science can be balanced with the rapid pace and excitement of social innovation. Sensoy Bahar likewise provides a commentary on Flynn’s remarks, pointing out that social work may be uncomfortable with social innovation because of its long-standing commitment to vulnerable populations that may be most adversely affected by the unintended consequences of social innovation’s zeal for rapid change.

Four papers in this special issue provide perspectives on challenges faced by social work in the pursuit of innovation. Traube, Begun, Okpych, and Choy-Brown argue that a confluence of factors in the social work profession act to stifle innovation in the realm of social work practice. Rodriguez, Ostrow, and Kemp discuss the challenges faced by social work to scale-up beyond individual-level interventions to larger scale solutions that are likely needed to solve the sorts of problems championed by the Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative. Okpych provides a historical perspective on radical change in social work, exploring the challenges faced by the empirical clinical practice movement and the lessons to be learned from that movement’s lack of success. Finally, Stringfellow offers a lens on social work innovation borrowed from engineering in the form of a systems dynamics approach to understand the challenges that may be faced by social work in its attempt to engage with social innovation.

These papers are complemented by a more optimistic discussion of how social work may merge with social innovation in productive ways. Traube, Begun, Petering, and Flynn discuss the potential for β testing in social work. In this paper, the authors argue that social work does not currently have a method for expediting scientific innovation into practice. They argue for a rethinking of the scientific process in social work that includes β testing, as is common in engineering and business, as a way to dramatically shorten the time needed to bring scientific advancements into practice settings.

Nurius anchors a very different discussion of innovation, one focused on the role of doctoral education. She argues that for social work to continue to be innovative in the future, social work must engage in transdisciplinary research and we must train our doctoral students to be a part of this new innovative scientific workforce. Craddock offers a commentary on this paper, suggesting that doctoral students would benefit from “rotations” in different disciplines as part of their education much as medical students participate in rotations in different areas of practice. Hertel also offers commentary on the Nurius’s article but focuses very differently on the role of indigenous knowledge. She argues that transdisciplinary work should include not only different scientific perspectives but also indigenous perspectives that often produce meaningful and different ways understanding the world.

Akin to these papers on transdisciplinary issues, two other papers tackle the role of collaboration in the creation of innovation in social work. Palinkas, He, Choy-Brown, and Hertel consider innovation in the science of social work from the perspective of implementation science and examine the role of research–practice partnerships in creating innovations in social work science. Rice, Petering, Stringfellow, and Craddock offer a social network theory of innovation, arguing that innovation occurs when individuals from different network spaces come together to solve social problems. An exchange of ideas across networks has the potential to transform old ideas from disparate spaces into innovative new ideas in the context of new collaborations.

These papers are certainly not the final word on innovation in social work. Rather it is our hope that this special issue and the discussions at IslandWood that inspired these papers will spark more discussion in our field. We also hope that these discussions will contribute toward a critical appraisal of social work, social innovation, and innovation in social work. The Grand Challenges for Social Work put forth by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare are great indeed and will require our most innovative solutions.