Discussions of contemporary development policy are increasingly in registers of social, political and ecological crisis. How are citizens using social innovation to tackle the development-related problems within their localities? This lecture juxtaposes the claims of social innovation literature with civil society response to ecosystem degradation in Udaipur, Rajasthan, and Baoshan, China. It also raises questions of the value of US-centric concepts of social innovation, the nature of professional competence needed, and the politics of the complex negotiations through which social innovation is achieved.