This article seeks to establish the determinants of social innovation (IS) in the Fourth Generation Foundations (FCG) in Barranquilla, Colombia. For the purpose of this investigation, it is proposed to investigate the impact of four specific factors: (1) funding capacity, (2) technical and scientific capacity, (3) social ownership of knowledge and (4) inter-institutional articulation, on the number of initiatives developed by the FCG during 2016, through a linear multi-regression model. The results had a greater influence on the social ownership factor, consolidating the importance of articulating tacit and explicit knowledge in the process of jointly identifying problems and collectively constructing initiatives within the organisations, followed by the funding factor showing the importance of proper management of resources and the diversity of sources of funding and, finally, the technical and scientific capacity in which physical and human resources are combined for the development of this type of initiative. This highlights the importance of linking FGCs with the community for the promotion of social innovations in Barranquilla.