Social innovation, as an element of modification of a pre-existing status quo, does not necessarily find an easy life in the production of new services, products and solutions able to solve questions and problems of a community. The experience of the long iter for the redevelopment of the formerly psychiatric hospital “Santa Maria della Pietà”, in Rome, is a clear example. Since 2004 the self-management popular experimentation of Pavilion 31 (the “Ex Lavanderia – former Laundry of the mental hospital”) has started, in a place that since the mid-70s had already been converted from the administration of the asylum into an open space for cultural and social production and use. The economic and cultural relevance of the asset, the length of the dispute, the repeated and contradictory positions taken by the different institutions involved (municipality, region, province, LHU – local health unit), the various attempts made by the involved community and the experimentation initiated by the Ass. Ex Lavanderia in Pavilion 31 make this conflict a paradigmatic case, even if not unique of its kind. The research aims to evaluate to what extent the uncertainty due to a conflictual context may have influenced the social innovation impact.