This introduction to the special issue on ‘Advancing the understanding of social innovation in sustainability transitions’ is situated at the intersection of transition studies and social innovation research. In the past years, linkages between the fields of social innovation research and transition studies have been established: while transition scholars increasingly focus on social innovation phenomena, social innovation scholars engage in better understanding the relations between social innovation and societal transformation and its impacts towards sustainability. With its eight contributions, this special issue further explicates and broadens out this intersection of both fields, with an empirical focus on insights on energy transitions. Social innovation is introduced as a sensitising concept to advance our understanding of sustainability transitions along three themes: process of change; power and politics; as well as policies and policy mixes. This introduction closes by providing future research avenues and implications for policy.

对“增进对可持续转型中社会创新的理解”特刊的介绍处于转型研究和社会创新研究的交叉点。在过去的几年里，社会创新研究和转型研究领域之间的联系已经建立：转型学者越来越关注社会创新现象，而社会创新学者则致力于更好地理解社会创新与社会转型之间的关系及其对可持续性的影响。本期特刊通过其八篇贡献，进一步阐明和拓宽了这两个领域的交叉点，并重点关注对能源转型的实证见解。社会创新作为一个敏感概念被引入，以增进我们对以下三个主题的可持续转型的理解：变革的过程；权力和政治；以及政策和政策组合。本介绍最后提供了未来的研究途径和对政策的影响。