Social Innovation as a Support for the Development of Social Entrepreneurship in the Czech Republic

This chapter reviews the background of innovation and its types, as well as its implementation in agriculture. The content covers the measurement of innovation in all industries by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which focuses on four types of innovation: product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, and organizational innovation. Following these types of innovations, this chapter categorizes the types of agricultural innovations adopted in Asian countries over time into three main groups. These are product and process innovation, marketing and organizational innovation, and social innovations by institutional changes and welfare. Measuring the impact of agricultural innovations on farming and rural welfare is also summarized on three aspects, namely, production, economics, and welfare in Asian countries. Our findings show that agricultural innovations have brought positive outcomes for agriculture and society in the countries, albeit with some limitations.

Introduction. The features of social innovations classification are investigated. It allows them to be identified among the whole set of innovations in the social sphere of public systems. The approach is based on the differentiation between the main features that are characteristic for the given type of innovation. Purpose. The article aims to define the peculiarities of social innovations classification from a viewpoint of sustainable development for social and economic systems of different levels. Results. The main features of social innovations classification in terms of sustainable development have been described. The differentiation of social innovations into "deterministic" and "veritable" considering the basic peculiarities of social and economic systems development has been suggested. It has been specified that deterministic social innovations relating to innovation-oriented social and economic systems arise as the positive externals in the result of introducing technical, technological, economic, environmental and other innovations, thus, “veritable” social innovations are generated exceptionally for public development. The generation of such types of social innovation is characterized by the prospect of economic potential of the social and economic system.

Interest in social innovations (SIs) from both the academic and the policy side is growing. Nonetheless, we still know little about which sustainable development goals (SDGs) SIs already address. Furthermore, only little is known about who the innovators developing and implementing SIs are. In this paper, we aim to bring more clarity and structure to the field of SIs. Firstly, a systematic literature review was conducted, before a content analysis was used to analyze the definitions used with regard to similarities. Secondly, all case studies described in the reviewed articles were then further systematically analyzed in order to identify the social or environmental problems addressed and the innovators involved. For the purpose of classifying the diverse types of problems, we used the globally known and broadly accepted 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). Results showed that most SI case studies deal with an improvement of health and well-being. Furthermore, our study illustrates that there is a pronounced difference in the focus of SIs between developing and developed countries. Concerning the innovators, our results indicate that five types of innovators are fundamentally involved in developing and implementing SIs: social entrepreneurs, NGOs and non-profits, public institutions, civil society, firms, and social enterprises. Our definition analysis as well as the identification and classification of the innovators and addressed social needs bring much-needed clarity and structure to the field. However, our systematic review shows that SI is still in its infancy and it will be interesting to see where the field will head.

Az MTA és a Magyar Nemzeti Vidéki Kutatóhálózat (MNVH) közötti kutatási megállapodás keretében az egyik részkutatás témája a Társadalmi és gazdasági innováció, valamint a vidéki térségeink innovációt befogadó képessége címet viselte. A kutatás célja kettős volt, egyrészt a vidéki innováció fogalmának és összetevőinek elemzése, másrészt a társadalmi és gazdasági innovációt befogadó tér és társadalom jellemzőinek feltárása egy helyzetkép bemutatásán keresztül. A tanulmányban a fogalmak tisztázását követően az innovációs esetek empirikus vizsgálatának eredményeit mutatom be, majd meghatározom a rurális innováció földrajzi, társadalmi és gazdasági térre vonatkozó tulajdonságait az interjúk tapasztalatain keresztül. A vizsgálat rámutatott arra, hogy a befogadó közeg nagymértékben függ a társadalom, a gazdaság nyitottságától és a humán tőkétől. A tanulmány a társadalmi és gazdasági innováció egymásra hatását is vizsgálja, és eseteken keresztül mutatja be, hogyan képesek erősíteni egymást és magát az innovációra való hajlamot is. Végül elemzem a rurális innováció területi specifikumait és az innovátorok tulajdonságait.

The main goal of the chapter is to find out whether age, gender, education, or business experience is related to the creation of innovations in the enterprises. Social innovation is divided into six types of innovation. These six types of innovation are divided into pure and combined innovations. This innovation activity determines whether entrepreneurs are developing business ideas. Part of the study shows how entrepreneurs approach social innovation. The approach to innovation can also change over time with regard to manager competencies and the life cycle of a manager's career in enterprise. The pilot study is based on an analysis of 128 respondents' answers. 128 companies from all regions of the Czech Republic were selected for information collection. The study points to a link between business experience, age, gender, education, and managerial innovation activity.

Why does the progress of civilisation require social innovations?

The term innovation has sometimes been used as a synonym for technological innovation until the concept of social innovation attracted academic attention. Since then, these two types of innovation have been investigated individually. It can be claimed that, despite the great importance of social innovation studies, technological innovation studies received more attention. In addition, there are limited studies that have examined technological and social innovation together. The aim of this study was to examine the causal relationship between technological and social innovations. The impact of entrepreneurial characteristics on social innovation was also analyzed. This study was based on a comprehensive field study including 767 university students from 10 universities from different regions of Turkey. Regression analyses and structural equation modeling confirmed that social and technological innovation were related to one another, and both were correlated with a particular constellation of personal characteristics.

ObjetivoO objetivo deste artigo consiste em discutir os avanços mais recentes nos campos da inovação gerencial e da inovação social, na busca de possíveis aspectos convergentes e divergentes entre essas temáticas.Desenho/metodologia/abordagemAo examinar o estado da arte da literatura em ambas as temáticas, propõe-se um framework de abordagens teóricas, dimensões conceituais, metas e objetivos, processos, agentes, resultados, métodos e lacunas da literatura.ResultadosHá diferenças substanciais entre inovação gerencial e social em termos de fundamentos teóricos e conceituais. Embora ambas compartilhem semelhanças, dado o seu foco nas relações sociais e a relevância da tecnologia, seus processos de geração e difusão, entre outras características, são distintos.Limitações/implicações da pesquisaComo se trata de um artigo teórico sobre inovações que envolvem elementos sociais em sua essência, o desafio é incorporar a inovação tecnológica no framework teórico. Isso ajudaria pesquisas empiricamente orientadas sobre mais tipos de inovação.Implicações práticasA agenda de profissionais, acadêmicos, governo e sociedade civil deve levar em conta diferentes tipos de inovação, particularmente aquelas que vão além da tecnologia.Originalidade/valorEste artigo contribui para uma melhor compreensão das inovações que vão além da tecnologia, ao analisar inovações (no caso, as gerenciais e sociais) que possuem aspectos sociais como elementos centrais. Poucos pesquisadores analisaram conjuntamente esses tipos de inovações.

Social Innovation Promoting Policy and its Implementation in the European Union

Social innovation is concerned with social mobilization and impact, and is increasingly seen as an option to address sustainability challenges. Nevertheless, the concept of social innovation is quite open in character and requires empirical accommodation to establish how it differs from other types of innovation in this setting. This article contributes empirically to the concept of social innovation as it reviews categories of success factors of social innovation against those of five other innovation types (product, service, governmental, organizational, system) in 202 innovation cases that focus on climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. Statistical analysis with contingency tables is applied to examine the distribution of five kinds of success factors across the innovation types: economic, environmental, political, social, and technological. The results confirm empirically that social innovation is indeed a distinct type of innovation. There are statistically significant differences in the distribution of categories of success factors between social innovation on the one hand and product, service and governance innovation on the other. In addition to the prevalence of social success factors, social innovation is characterized by a lesser emphasis on political and technological success factors.

Numerous firm-level studies indicate a positive relationship between innovation and exports, being an important indicator of international competitiveness. The aim of this chapter is to present a cross-country analysis of the relationship between innovation and exports of firms in selected new EU Member States from the CEE region. All types of innovation (i.e. product, process, organizational, and marketing innovation) are analyzed and their relationship with international sales is assessed in this chapter. The analysis is based on Community Innovation Survey (CIS) micro data of 10,903 innovative manufacturing firms from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Romania for the 2006 – 2008 period. The logistic regression models are constructed to identify the relationship between each type of innovation and firms' export sales. The reverse causality (i.e. the effect of international sales on firm innovation) is also investigated. The strongest relationship between the introduction of product innovation and export sales on all foreign target markets was revealed for firms in all CEE countries. The influence of other types of innovation on export sales was also proved positive, though weaker, in most of these countries. The influence of international sales on firm's innovation in all surveyed countries was weaker than the impact of innovation on export.

Social enterprise and innovation are inextricably linked in the literature (Chell et al. in Entrepr Reg Dev 22(6):485–493, 2010; Dees in Harv Bus Rev 76:54, 1998; Light in Stanf Soc Innov Rev 4(3):47–51, 2006). To date, research on social enterprise innovation has predominantly focused on micro-level factors, such as the social entrepreneur or organizational attributes. Inversely, recent empirical advances on social enterprise find a country’s social enterprise sector is influenced by macro-institutional factors, including form of government, stage of economic development, culture and model of civil society (Monroe-White and Coskun, in: Shaping social enterprise: understanding institutional context and influence, Emerald Publishing Limited, London, pp 27–48, 2017). Given the link between social enterprise and innovation, recent empirical findings around social enterprise beg the question, do macro-institutional factors similarly predict innovation by social enterprises? This paper uses a hierarchical linear model to examine the influence of national-level variables on social enterprise innovation. Results indicate that similar to social enterprise, macro-institutional factors predict social enterprise innovation. More specifically, macro-institutional factors influence the various types of innovations (product, process and marketing) differently. Moreover, country-level innovation is traditionally defined by economic factors, such as R&D funding and STEM workforce, however, these factors do not help explain social enterprise innovation. Given the social aspects of social enterprise innovation, to capture the full scope of innovation within countries, expanded definitions of national-level innovation should be considered.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to clarify the multiple different approaches of social innovation, focusing on francophone literature. Originality/gap/relevance/implications: We propose an in-depth literature review that questions the meaning of the adjective "social" when used by authors to qualify an innovation, that highlights the different approaches of the concept, their relations to each other and their limits, and that illustrates these approaches with concrete examples. Finally, we build on these materials to propose a new innovation typology that wholly integrates social innovation. Key methodological aspects: The literature review is based on a selection of 25 papers in French - the mother language of the author - which were collected and analyzed using the "theoretical saturation point" method: we stopped the review when we felt there was no new crucial element in the next articles read, that is, when it seemed that a "saturation point" of information had been reached about theories on social innovation. Summary of key results: The definition of social innovation as new answers provided to unsatisfied or badly-satisfied social demands seems to prevail in the literature. It can be divided into three sub-approaches: the public policies, the social entrepreneurship, and the participatory dynamics, which strikes us as the most interesting, without excluding the others. Key considerations/conclusions: We propose a new innovation typology, which presents social innovation's relations to other types of innovation. We conclude with some considerations about social innovation context of emergence, and about its ambiguous position in the neoliberal system.

Technical innovation is not separated from the social so much, but it is difficult to mix the two types of innovation. It is possible to arrange innovations along a continuum where, at one pole, social innovations are conditioned by technical innovations and, at the other, social innovations are first and autonomous. Social innovations (way of living together activities), in climbing or in diving, have been conditioned by the technical innovations of safety equipment. Social innovation, in this case, is consistent with the increased use of technology. But, social innovations can be more independent from technical innovations (adventure parks do not add new technologies to the equipment used in the army, but the ways of living together are different). Users become central in social innovation in outdoor sports. Involvement of the players is an essential condition for successful innovation.

What is not social innovation