The contribution of social innovation to smart specialisation strategies

1. The contribution of social innovation to smart specialisation strategies Pedro Marques, Cardiff University Kevin Morgan, Cardiff University Ranald Richardson, Newcastle University Adrian Healey, Cardiff University Smart Specialisation for Regional Innovation (SmartSpec) http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/cplan/research/smartspec This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement number 320131.

2. Structure of presentation • What is social innovation? • Social innovation and smart specialisation • The challenge of ageing: • Social innovation as a complement • Social innovation as a challenge • Social innovation and the lack of community • Concluding remarks

3. What is social innovation? Processunderlines all types of social innovation Social innovation as context dependent

4. Social innovation and smart specialisation • Choices: RIS3 is about the selection of a few investment priorities based on a process of entrepreneurial discovery to identify promising areas for specialization. • SI could contribute by identifying areas of activity that are not currently being considered by economic agents operating under traditional innovation models. • Competitive advantage: RIS3 builds on current regional economic specialisation and mobilises talent by matching RTD+I and business needs and capacities. • Introducing an SI component into RIS 3 strategies would help highlight ways in which current RTD+I strengths could be used differently to stimulate innovation. • Critical mass: RIS3 aims at developing world class excellence clusters and providing arenas for related variety and cross-sectoral links which drive specialised technological diversification; • An SI approach can help identify new areas of activity, which can feed into new, albeit related, areas of specialisation. • Collaborative leadership: RIS3 is the result of collective endeavour involving not only the academic world, public authorities and the business community, but also innovation users. • The development of new goods and services with an SI approach would have to incorporate the notion that some user groups might be hard to reach, for example because they lack financial resources or because they are socially excluded.

5. Social innovation and ageing (1) • Social innovation as a complement to ageing policies • Delivery: need for integrated approaches leads to necessity to engage with users and communities • Feedback: need to engage with users and communities to inform progress of STI, policy, public service deliver, etc.

6. Social innovation and ageing (2) • Social innovation as a challenge to ageing policies • Delivery: in cases where mainstream policies are locked into treatment and technological development they will struggle to implement socially innovative approaches • Feedback: knowledge fed back from community engagement might challenge private sector or public sector preferences

7. Social innovation and ageing (3) • Social innovation and the lack of community • Delivery: lack of resources to engage with users and communities hinders effective ageing policies • Feedback: elderly do not exist as a cohesive community, which makes it harder to coalesce around which elements should be in integrated approaches

8. Concluding remarks • Social innovation has potential to make contribution to smart specialisation policies. But… • … there is a possibility that social innovation is not important or relevant for smart specialisation • Also social innovation still has to prove that it adds value to concepts that already exist