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Social innovation has been gaining increased attention as a solution for achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Considering the implications that regional differences have in both interpreting and attaining the SDGs through social innovation, this study focuses on the Nordic countries. This paper investigates how social innovation initiatives (SIIs) potentially alter social practices to achieve the SDGs. After analyzing 159 Nordic SIIs, it was found that few SIIs addressed environmentally relevant SDGs. These Nordic SIIs were mainly driven by social enterprises or non-profits. Primarily, SIIs introduced services and products that can lead to altered social practices to mainly achieve social and economic relevant SDGs. It was also found that the beneficiaries’ role was not always central. Future research must focus more on SIIs’ role in addressing environmentally relevant SDGs in addition to the role of using market mechanisms for introducing social innovation.

New technologies, market-based solutions, and regulation have proven inadequate in remedying today's human caused ecological crises. This suggests that detrimental social practices need to be fundamentally changed. While social innovation is one possible approach for such change, a comprehensive picture of research on social innovation in relation to ecological challenges is missing. Therefore, with an emphasis on so-called strong sustainability, this article's purpose was to investigate social innovation's potential in relation to ecological crises, to identify important gaps, and advance research implications. A systematic literature review of social innovation research that address environmental issues was carried out, and the resulting literature was analyzed according to sustainability and five dimensions of social innovation. To reap more of social innovation's potential in our time of ecological crises, we suggest a move in social innovation research towards strong sustainability and propose such research avenues within each of the five dimensions of social innovation: conceptualization, environmental needs and challenges, key resources, capabilities, and constraints, types of governance, networks and actors, and, finally, process dynamics for strongly sustainable social innovation.

Increasingly, social innovation has been called upon for addressing societal challenges. However, its application to environmental challenges has been limited, despite evident negative environmental developments. We advocate for the role of social innovation and a strong sustainability perspective in response to environmental challenges. Our purpose is to develop a version of social innovation consistent with strong sustainability. This conceptualization is based on four principles deduced from strong sustainability: criticality of nature, protection of vital environmental functions, hierarchy of needs, and coexistence. Then, we use illustrative examples to discuss the practical implications that strong sustainability has for social innovation initiatives. We conclude by discussing future research avenues for analyzing strongly sustainable social innovations.