Members of the Social Innovation Community project consortium #SICeurope attended the conference “Opening to an Era of Social Innovation” #OpenEraSI, which took place in Lisbon, Portugal, the 27th and 28th of November of 2017. The conference focused on the design of the future framework program (FP) for Research and Innovation of the EU for the period 2020-2027 #SIResearch.
Along the two-day program we learned about the key future approaches to Social Innovation Research, which were shared through the presentation of the policy paper “Social Innovation as a Trigger for Transformations -The Role of Research”. The report emphasized the need for a greater focus on SI research and policy #SIpolicy by strengthening the role of Social Sciences and Humanities #SSH in Europe.
Amongst the different observations included in this report, special recognition is given to the following topics:
- Reintegration of equity and redistribution into EU policy models
- Macro-economic and social policy assessment of austerity policies
- Institutionalism culturally and socially revisited
- Institutionalisation of SI and socio-political transformation
- Bottom-linked governance, scalar politics and socio-technical transformation
- Matching policy, SI organization and research models: towards integrated Science and Policy practices
- Tensions between direct and representative democracy under Europeanisation and globalisation
- The future of nationalisms, the building of responsive political ideologies and the construction of solidarities beyond national borders
- Democratic and society-feasible higher education
The future of SI research is strongly influenced by a greater emphasis on societal challenges. In this regard, it should to be directed to community and network building of SI beyond national borders, where the implication of digital technologies and skills #digitalskills will play a major role also in the development of public sector innovation #publicsectorinn.
Reference
Moulaert, Frank, Mehmood, Abid, MacCallum, Diana and Leubolt, Bernhard, eds. 2017. Social innovation as a trigger for transformations – the role of research. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/research/social-sciences/pdf/…
Author(s):
Orginally published: 24 Jan 2018, on www.siceurope.eu
The SIC project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 693883