Social innovation has a rather brief history in Hungary. Primarily, social innovation is envoked in relation to market production, focussing on the capacity of enterprises to employ a labour force, to diversify the skills of that labour force, and to increase mobility within the national economy.

In Hungary, the terms: social economy, social entrepreneurship, social services and social innovation aren’t clearly distinguished within public policies. Social innovations and social entrepreneurship are strongly interlinked, having a complementary and an important role to play in tackling major societal challenges in Hungary, which are: poverty and social exclusion, aging population, youth unemployment and too early exit of 55+ year old, discrimination against Roma and homelessness.

Social innovation is time and context specific. That means it can mean different things in different context. What might not seem innovative in one country, may be ground breaking in another. The political and cultural background is important to understand. There are also a wide variety of organisations involved in this field, each have different perspectives. So, the purpose of this page is to demonstrate a variety of views on what social innovation means to different kinds of organisations in Hungary.

Read the full report here: Social Innovation in Hungary (2016)