Social entrepreneurship and social innovation are two widely used concepts today, but they do not have univocal meanings in or outside the academic field. Is it possible to innovate in the search for a solution to a social problem? Can the degree of social innovation be measured?
Innovation goes far beyond simply having a good idea. It is an organized process to develop an idea and make it a reality. People are good at coming up with good ideas, but taking these ideas forward is not so easy. The success of innovations depends on the ability and determination to change things, on the willingness of companies or people themselves to face challenges and take risks. When all these efforts are focused, not only on the desire to create wealth, but on the will to solve social problems and create value for people, we speak of social innovation.
Thus, we understand by social innovation all those new ideas, strategies and processes that align with the needs of society. In this way, social innovation is aimed at improving human well-being by providing solutions to global problems and proposing alternatives that transform society. The social innovation process goes through four main stages:
- the detection of new social needs,
- the development of prototypes of new solutions that respond to these needs,
- analyzing the effectiveness of these new solutions
- and scaling up effective social innovations.
There are many individuals and groups around the world committed to the development and support of social innovation. These are the so-called social entrepreneurs , people who work to bring about positive change at all levels of society. They are entrepreneurs who, in addition to possessing the creativity, vision, persistence and determination of the traditional entrepreneur, work to create new solutions that produce significant social change.
So how do these social entrepreneurs create value ? These people not only work with the objective of designing solutions that generate improvements within a certain sector of society, but also try to find a way to make these solutions available to as many people as possible. To do this, they use three main forms of dissemination; the creation of an organizational model that allows the mobilization of resources and people, the elaboration of a program that brings together the set of actions necessary to achieve the specific objective or the establishment of guidelines and values on which the development of the social project is supported. These three practices are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, the use of all of them allows greater dissemination of the proposed solutions.
In summary, social innovation seeks to find new ideas that are capable of improving people’s well-being, and that have a positive impact on society. Social entrepreneurs are those who seek to develop this social innovation. From ideas and social projects they try to create new solutions for social problems that improve people’s lives.
At Innovation Factory TM Institute we understand the importance of both aspects and we have related them by creating courses of innovation and creativity appropriate to the current needs of companies, providing them with the tools that professionals can then use in their jobs and from any area of the organization to be more creative and innovative. We invite you to take a look at our list of courses on innovation!
- Open Innovation and reverse innovation
- Inspire social responsibility with creativity
- Innovation: Creating ideas, identify opportunities and turn them into realities
These courses will allow you to deepen your knowledge about innovation-oriented to respond to social needs, how to creatively promote social responsibility within the company, and how to turn ideas into reality. This course is adapted to the current needs of companies and provides tools that professionals can then use in their jobs. We invite you to take a look at our courses on innovation and creativity!
Welcome to Edward's Business World 