Social Innovation SIB Council (SIB-SI)

Keywords:

Social needs; socio-technical processes; social construction of technology/innovation; technological shaping of society; innovation democracy.

Scope:

The idea of “social innovation” refers to innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are predominantly diffused through organizations whose primary purposes are social. In this sense, social innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, and ways of organizing that meet different kinds of social needs (from working conditions and education to community development and health), thus extending civil society and renewing welfare politics. Social innovation can take place within governments, organizations, communities, or the nonprofit sector, but is increasingly seen to happen most effectively in the space between different networks and actors.

The scope of Social Innovation SIB is to bring together the many actors interested in social innovation in their daily activities, and to stimulate an open discussion on (1) its meanings, (2) its future development and (3) on how to foster its potential in the future.

Key-Challenges:

• To identify the theories to consider for a social innovation process.
• To adopt a pragmatic and democratic point of view, therefore clarify the meaning of “innovation from and for the social”.
• To address the role – usually linked with actors interests – that different stakeholders play in social innovation processes.
• To consider the ethical and power/political implications of such processes.
• To identify the preferred process of technology creation.
• To first imagine and then correctly analyze – in both short and long terms – the social impacts of innovation.
• To both improve theory and practice through virtuous circles of innovation.

Mission:

A focus on innovation primarily as a social process (in its means and outcomes) provides a particularly composite framework, where a variety of organisational dynamics, material infrastructures, groups of actors, institutional dynamics, and technological devices, participate in and contribute to the activation and the stabilisation of innovation processes.

The mission of the Social Innovation SIB is to congregate scientists, developers and daily practitioners to share their views on the present and the future of innovation under a social paradigm. If – how a 30 years studies tradition suggest – innovation is primarily a socio-technical process where (a) the social constructs ideas and technologies and (b) the technical re-construct societies, innovation should be treated with both sociological and technological sensitiveness. Discussion should start from the agreement (or not) of the socio-technical perspective on innovation, identifying the core issues-opportunities-risks, in order to start moving from theory to practice and generate a group that will facilitate concrete innovation in the future

Description:

The idea of social innovation can be seen as an answer to the failures that the assumption of a linear model of innovation has produced over the years. For quite a long time, in fact, the idea of innovation has been strictly related to that of technological development: innovations often seemed to depend on the kinds of knowledge and technologies available, in the belief that innovations follow a linear progressive development based on criteria of scientific and economic rationality. Intended as products and services developed in a linear way on the basis of the knowledge and technological artefacts available, innovations therefore looked like neutral results of the process of technological development occurring in a given society.

Such view of innovation has received plenty of criticism over the years: from a political perspective, the criticism concerned the dimension of power involved in such innovations, and consequently in their accessibility; from a theoretical perspective, many studies have started questioning the taken-for-granted rationality of these processes. Starting from an accurate reconstruction of the ‘competition’ that usually takes place among different possible innovations, these studies have pointed out the role played by social factors in the processes of innovation. Focusing on groups of relevant actors (and on the various interests they represent), which usually converge (and conflict) around innovations, have contributed to highlight the role played not only by scientists and/or engineers and/or entrepreneurs, but also by the public to which these innovations are addressed. Organisational dynamics, institutional pressures, and the active participation of specific interest groups, are significantly involved in innovation processes, so that social networks and organisational and coordination processes are the main factors of production and stabilisation of innovations.

Social innovation has to be intended not as a single event caused by a linear development, but as a composite phenomenon, both social and technical (“socio-technical”), which can assume a variety of forms and configurations, more or less strictly related to organisational processes, institutional settings, and situated contexts. A focus on innovation primarily as a social process (in its means and outcomes) provides therefore a particularly composite framework, where a variety of organisational dynamics, material infrastructures, groups of actors, institutional dynamics, and technological devices, participate in and contribute to the activation and the stabilization of innovation processes.