The Institute for Social Inventions was a think tank set up in 1985 to publicise and launch good ideas for improving the quality of life.
Its founder Nicholas Albery (1948–2001) sought to promote non-technological innovations.
The Institute emerged from the informal network of Social centers and Info-services which spread around in London throughout the 1970s.
One of the earliest of these centers was BIT Information Service, founded in 1968 by John "Hoppy" Hopkins.
All these denominations revolved around the concept of new improvements to be made within the situation of the mainstream society, as it goes at any time to be considered.