Theoretical and practical considerations on social innovation
Juha Koivisto, DSocSci, Research Manager, Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare
Juha Koivisto’s keynote lecture consists of a theoretical and a practical part. The first part tackles theoretical conceptualization of social innovation and innovation activity. The lecture studies a performative definition of social according to which ´social´, that is, social relations, social structures, and societies are continuous and precarious effects that are performed and re-performed by human and nonhuman actors. This definition has implications on how we define social innovation and what innovation activity is like; what kinds of elements social innovations are constituted by, how they might be developed, and how they might be scaled up and translated into different contexts. The second part of the lecture presents Innovillage (wwe.innokyla.fi) which is a national innovation environment for developing and scaling up models and solutions in health and social care in Finland. The key task of Innovillage is to enhance and enable co-creation of models and solutions. It provides online tools applicable at the various stages of innovation activity and a forum for scaling up models and solutions.
Its services are all based on three common principles – openness, collaboration, and learning from each other. In conclusion, the lecture defines key challenges of developing social innovation.
Social innovation and exemplary approaches to the development of novel social work interventions
Prof. Dr. Daniel Gredig, University of Applied Sciences and Art Northwestern Switzerland, School of Social Work
In social science, ‘social innovation’ takes on various meanings. In this talk, I set out the meaning of this term in sociology and contrast it with the understanding that has emerged in social work, where ‘social innovation’ has been used to refer to innovations in social work practice. This raises the question how new social work interventions can be developed. I remind on the promise of action research to be transformative and generate new courses of action in practice. Then, I turn to intervention research, a conception developed in the USA, and to research-based intervention development, a model developed in Switzerland. I illustrate the latter with an example of the development of an HIV prevention offer targeting heterosexual men in Switzerland.
Innovative Commons as pathway to more social innovation?
Prof. Dr. Tina Haisch, University of Applied Sciences and Art Northwestern Switzerland, School of Business
The concept of the innovative commons is the result of the INNO-Futures project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The researchers from the Universities of Neuchâtel and Bern (Tina Haisch was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bern) held numerous discussions and organized workshops with the various actors in innovation as well as Swiss and international expert groups. On this basis, the research team developed a new Swiss innovation policy with a strong focus on social innovation: the policy of the innovative commons. Based on this policy, the Co-Next Lab project in Muttenz, Canton Basel-Landschaft, will be presented as an example.