Maria Prandi, Researcher, Institute for Social Innovation, ESADE
Juan Cano, Entrepreneur and consultant, Semilla Consultores Ltda, Bogotá, Colombia
Co-innovation: innovation through collaboration.
Matrix of innovation based on two axis: technology, and business model. When both have radical advances, we find radical innovation. When both make slight advances, we got incremental innovation. When one factor advances radically and the other just slightly, the outcome is semiradical innovation. Radical innovation is found in mobile phones, where both technology and business models advanced radically. Semi-radical innovation is found in GPSs or digital photography, where only one factor (business model in the former, technology in the later) advances radically and the other one slightly.
Social innovation chooses the most effective among the existing solutions and increases the capacity to innovate socially, because it addresses real needs and/or people’s demands.
In the third sector, social innovation produces new services and outputs along with new sources of income. In the public sector, social innovation is again new public services, along with new policies. The informal sector (non-institutional or non-organized citizens) can provide, with social innovation, new ways of collaboration, along with new ways to adapt to difficulties. In the academic sector, the two axes of radical innovation are connecting science and technology and the ways to train in competences.
Benefits of social innovation:
- More opportunities for generating ideas.
- Broader answers to social needs.
- More efficient, quick, real, agile solutions.
- Coordinated increase of the society’s capacity to act.
Some conclusions on social innovation:
- In social innovation the creative process is as important as the interaction with other actors.
- Social innovation takes place when different sectors overlap.
- Social innovation can be learnt and, over all, can be shared.
