Theory and future prospects of social innovation

Section: Management including Cross-Project Activities

Preparing for the Big Shift. The Capacity of Social Innovations in 21st Century’s World Society. In: Jiří Loudin and Josef Hochgerner, Social and Cultural Dimensions of Innovation in Knowledge Societies. Prague: Filosofia. p. 19 – 41.

ISBN 978-80-7007-353-7

Excerpt from the introduction:

The tendency to strengthen the social dimension of innovation leads to the establishment of the concept of social innovation. Josef Hochgener takes on this issue in his contribution.
Hochgerner argues that the discourse around social innovation should lead to a wider notion of innovation, which would include a social dimension of all kinds of innovations and the identifying of particularities of innovations in all sectors of society – in the public sector and the business and civil sectors as well. Should social innovation be a specifi cally defi ned concept with its own and delimitable fi eld, Hochgerner claims that the foundations of sustainable and productive scientifi c analysis still need to be created. To this end, he presents two central elements of such foundation: a general defi nition of social innovation and a concept of operable categories for recording, describing and analyzing diff erent types of social innovation derived from action theory.
The core of social innovation is the idea of changed social practice; social innovation constitutes a new meaning of action in its relation to others. Social innovations are part of social change and continuous change is a prerequisite for the survival and long-term stability of societies. The impact of social innovations
on society at large may be of narrow range but of major importance to those aff ected. Drawing on Parson’s theory of social systems, Hochgerner suggests a typology of social innovations with roles, relations, norms and values as its varieties.
Values and practices are a constitutive part of culture. Globalized knowledge society sets also the cultural factors of innovations into motion. The civilization dynamics based on knowledge and innovations carries with itself a latent danger of polarizing cultures, some are subjected to pressure, some tend to imitate others.

Authors: Josef Hochgerner

Tags: social innovation