The “seforïs” research project seeks to understand the potential of social enterprise in the EU and beyond to improve social inclusiveness of society through greater stakeholder engagement, promotion of civic capitalism and changes to social service provision through a) investigation of key processes within social enterprises for delivering inclusion and innovation, including organisation and governance, financing, innovation and behavioural change and b) investigation of formal and informal institutional context, including political, cultural and economic environments and institutions directly and indirectly support social enterprises. The methodology will be to start from policy and social enterprise practitioner issues to develop a theoretical framework for inclusion and innovation processes in context, followed by novel experimentation with social enterprises and in depth case study analysis to expand and enrich. Longitudinal survey data will be used to test and validate conclusions. Representative policy makers and social enterprises will be engaged throughout the process to ensure relevancy and transmission of results and findings.