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This study analyses the importance of teaching social entrepreneurship in state universities. A survey was applied to university students to find out if personality traits are related to the characteristics of social entrepreneurship. This was achieved through Alpha Cronbach and Pearson/Spearman correlation analysis. The results show that students have the personality traits to become social entrepreneurs. However, social entrepreneurship courses are not taught in universities of Tijuana city. Therefore, it is strongly suggested to teach social entrepreneurship in universities of the city and the state because students possess social entrepreneurship traits and are interested in the subject.

Although social innovation is an old paradigm, social innovation courses appeared in the curricula in the approximately last ten years. By doing so educational institutions acknowledged the existence of new approaches to obstacles that the world is facing. The courses regarding the social innovations give the students valuable knowledge and skills related to solving different social problems, increasing the motivation for being active in the society, and raising awareness about specific topics that need attention. An important role in implementing social innovation have ICT technologies. The role of the ICT is multiple: (1) administrative (members of the certain social initiative collaborate on the project through different ICT tools that enable communication and information organization), (2) disseminative and educational (the topic of the social initiative is disseminated through different tools and social media), and sometimes (3) topical (it the topic of social innovation project is directly connected to specific ICT technology). Based on the roles that the ICT takes upon in the process of social innovation implementation, the authors present ICT solutions that could be included in the realization of a social innovation course for business students at the graduate level.

Educating social innovators in higher education is of great importance as many societal challenges exist. This study combines experiential learning with ICT tools to provide students with the needed competences and experiences to solve societal challenges. We employ this approach in an innovative course, named Experts in Teamwork (EiT), which follows the experiential learning cycle. The participants of this study are undergraduate students interested to learn how they can solve societal challenges. Specifically, 26 students with various background and nationalities participated. A collaborative platform was developed that supports teamwork and cooperation, as well as the social innovation process. The findings show that this approach can influence positively learning outcomes and increase students' engagement and motivation with both social innovation and the learning process. Also, students' creativity was increased leading to the development of better solutions. The overall outcomes contribute to theoretical and practical development, to allow educators to take appropriate measures to enhance students' learning experience and foster social innovation through ICT.

The purpose of this paper is to present the factors that should be taken into consideration when assessing the level of acceptance of an ICT solution by the general public, as well as the innovating impact that such solution is expected to have at the level of society in the European Union. This involves the integration of social and technical skills and expertise, in order to gather the necessary feedback from the users in a clear and concise way. The final goal is to provide an online service that improves the quality of life and work of its users. In order to do so, such service needs to be capable of performing in a way that is as effortless as possible for the user, who will in turn be motivated to use it repeatedly. Moreover, the content of the online service must be able to address a social need in a way that is more efficient and novel than what has been available until then.

Cet article est une réponse prospective aux besoins de l'Internet des Objets en termes de simplicité d'utilisation, de gestion de la sécurité et de préservation de la vie privée. Nous proposons de satisfaire ces besoins à travers une plateforme d'intelligence collective utilisant des cartographies sémantiques en réalité augmentées pour récolter les interactions des utilisateurs avec des objets connectés. L'association de l'intelligence collective et des cartographies sémantiques permet d'envisager un design de connaissances où les capacités d'action des objets connectés sont facilement compréhensibles et modifiables par les utilisateurs. Dans ce dispositif, les technologies de blockchain sont utilisées pour partager en sécurité l'expression des utilisateurs et ainsi augmenter la confiance dans l'Internet des Objets et par la même contribuer au développement d'une réflexivité collective sur les usages de ces écosystèmes sociotechniques.

Nowadays, people are aware that many of the social changes and problems facing humanity cannot be solved by economic development or technological change alone. In recent years, many researchers have called for more attention to be given to social demand and social change. Although the concept of social innovation is still vague, solving social challenges through social innovation is considered to be important. At the same time, researches have been conducted on the importance of social enterprises and social entrepreneurs as players in social innovation. In addition to these researches, the roles and activities of firms in promoting social innovation should be focused on. This paper explores Japanese firms' social innovation activities by analyzing newspaper articles. The results show that firms tend to undertake social innovation by connecting their regular or core businesses with social innovation activities rather than building an innovative way to create social innovation.

The Syrian refugee crisis has been termed “the greatest humanitarian crisis of the last century” and countries around the world have stepped up to provide safe haven to millions of Syrians fleeing violence. Canada's unique private sponsorship policy coupled with government sponsorship of refugees saw more than 40,000 welcomed to Canada in a matter of months prompting the need for new processes and solutions. Grassroots organizations emerged, with new partnerships, processes and approaches enabled with new applications of simple technologies and revealed opportunities to leverage and amplify government resources. While fragmented and sometimes primitive these efforts signaled new opportunities to create an innovative “sharing economy” approach. This paper will review the relations between these new initiatives, actors and networks and the opportunities to drive systems change through a social innovation lens.

The Syrian refugee crisis has been termed “the greatest humanitarian crisis of the last century” and countries around the world have stepped up to provide safe haven to millions of Syrians fleeing violence. Canada's unique private sponsorship policy coupled with government sponsorship of refugees saw more than 40,000 welcomed to Canada in a matter of months prompting the need for new processes and solutions. Grassroots organizations emerged, with new partnerships, processes and approaches enabled with new applications of simple technologies and revealed opportunities to leverage and amplify government resources. While fragmented and sometimes primitive these efforts signaled new opportunities to create an innovative “sharing economy” approach. This paper will review the relations between these new initiatives, actors and networks and the opportunities to drive systems change through a social innovation lens.

Over the past few decades, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been perceived as an antecedent of competitive advantage. It was, moreover, placed at the top of the business agenda and recognized as a key driver of performance. Under this context, the present study sets to investigate how strategic CSR (SCSR) affects organizational performance and whether firms operating in “controversial” sectors should adopt SCSR activities. To this aim, this study reviews the body of knowledge on the topic, through a systematic review of the literature. After searching for academic publications in the Scopus database and selecting publications based on their relevance, 32 studies have been included in the review. Their analysis sheds light on common findings and contradicting arguments. Results show the main attributes of strategic, as opposed to non-strategic CSR activities. The importance of effective communication of SCSR activities is highlighted. SCSR is linked to “shared value”, as well as to competitive advantage, social innovation and good reputation. Voices of criticism focus on using SCSR as an empty promise that is used to counteract unethical behavior. Finally, more research is needed on the implementation of SCSR activities during recessionary periods.

The dependence on digital technologies has seen a significant increase during COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure that social connectivity and work goes on, in spite of lockdowns and the physical controls on movement. Though digital learning is expected to create abundant life-long learning opportunities for learners worldwide in this challenging time, there is a danger to further impose inequalities and inadequate access to quality education and life-long learning for the unconnected or poorly connected population. This paper shares our experience of reengineering a MOOC platform as `Community led MOOCs' to serve the learning needs of most under represented single mother communities in Bario - a remote settlement of Kelabits in the Borneo Island of Malaysia. This paper then explores TRIZ based heuristic models to address the socio-technological barriers to lifelong learning and proposes TRIZ principles that can trigger social innovation and creativity in designing lifelong learning solutions for rural communities.

Interrelations between creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneurial skills of individuals have long been discussed in the literature. Due to the challenges regarding their measurement, most studies focused on the intentions rather than the outcomes. The idea generation that requires creativity is the first stage of social innovation. The young population's creative potentials in participating social innovation practices deserve a special attention as they play a critical role in the innovativeness and entrepreneurship of societies. This study aims to explore the factors that determine the creative intentions of university students that are important in generating social innovation projects. A structured survey based on the literature was conducted among 600 management and engineering students from 3 universities from the different percentiles of the Entrepreneurial and Innovative University Index for 2012 of the Turkish Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology. The survey included questions on the demographic characteristics, environmental factors, motivators, university/institutional context, perceptions and creative thinking attitudes. By conducting reliability and factor analysis, accuracy and validity of data is tested and the impact factors were identified. Findings reveal that visionary attitude, curiosity, exploration and learning, attitude for own creativity, self-esteem, perception about the learnability of creativity, university and social environment are components of creative thinking intentions of students and some of these factors vary by year of study and university.

There are currently several social innovation initiatives being developed in isolation, where each one has its own path. In this context, actors want to collaborate and be coordinated in a network in order to increase the development and dissemination of social innovations. The use of collaboration mechanisms gives rise to the expectation that actors playing in groups tend to achieve quantitative and qualitative performance higher than individual performances. While the potential benefits of collaboration are recognized, effectively achieving collaboration is still a challenge for social innovation. In this context, the objective of this study is to identify how the concepts of collaboration are recognized in social innovation environments. In addition, we investigated which mechanisms are used and what are the difficulties faced by actors in this context. To do so, a survey research on the aspects of collaboration in social innovation environments was conducted. Results shown that engagement is the most cited challenge related to human factors; from 30 techniques mentioned, Design Thinking is the most applied; and from 41 tools, Google Drive is the most cited. Results from qualitative analysis shown that collaboration is considered essential to social innovation environments, although there are several challenges reported.

Social Innovation is one of the key indicators within the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Currently, service Design and its design thinking processes play a significant role in Innovation for businesses; it proved its social innovation impact in many projects building sustainable solutions. This study aims to highlight the value of implementing service design through the design thinking process in finding a sustainable solution for different social issues. Researchers achieved the aim of this study using qualitative methodology, implementing case study analysis as a method, were 28 design students have been asked to redesign missing social experiences during pandemics. These case studies explain how sustainable solutions can be generated via service design through the design thinking processes. The findings of this research highlight the value of implementing service design with its design thinking process to generate sustainable solutions for different social issues, concluding that this process can be taught and applied by designers to change their mindsets from `final outcome' to the concept of `final demand', aligning then with sustainability for social Innovation.

The process of social innovation involves 3 major stages: codiseño, coejecucion and monitoring. In this communication, the progress and results of the co-design process of the Project entitled Development of a Participatory Integral System to Improve and Restore Soils and the Productivity of Communities of the District of ÑURUM, which is executed in the Ngobe Buglé Comarca of Veraguas province. The methodology of Participatory Rural Innovation (IRP) with a polytextural approach was applied for the first time in Panama, to address a problem identified by the community itself. The results included: current situation of each context in the studied community, detection of SIR (redundant attempted situations), contextual interaction, disruptive tests and detection of possible overcoming. We also managed to address aspects of governance, requirements and potential of the community and finally innovative solutions were generated that constitute possible subprojects that make up the comprehensive roadmap of social innovation for soil improvement in Cerro Pelado. The experience allowed us to validate that there is a dynamic of social behavior very characteristic of each culture that largely determines the way in which people affected by a problem approach the possible solutions. In this context, CyT groups need to establish effective links with the affected communities to identify, design and implement solutions in a collective and sustainable way.

From the perspective of sustainability, this paper analyzes how stakeholders realize sustainable social innovation through co-creation. Through literature and case analysis, based on the group classification of social networks, this paper proposes three elements of social innovation: place creation, situation creation and relationship structure, and further sorts out the co-creation of meaning co-creation, behavior co-creation and value co-creation. The research shows that co-creation is a practical activity based on cultural identity, group interaction and resource integration, and stakeholders can achieve the goal of sustainable social innovation through meaning co-creation, behavior co-creation and value co-creation.

Participatory social innovation projects often involve the coming together of design researchers, community development groups, and community members to develop (often technological) solutions to social problems or challenges. “Intermediaries” are specific individuals and organisations who contribute to these projects by translating intentions, values and experiences between design researchers and communities. Previous research has not yet critically examined the role of intermediaries in such projects. This paper does so in a project carried out in rural areas of Europe, which sought to test and develop a technology to support the creation of FM community radio stations in isolated areas. We present the project as a biography of infrastructures to provide an account of intermediaries’ interactions during the project's unfolding. We find that how intermediaries shape the social base and ends of the project, and the interpretation of the technology involved, is influenced by their position, goals, and relationships in the process.

Recent studies regarding Social Innovation (SI) represent a small percentage of the academic research, and as a consequence the methodologies, focuses, and practices about this topic have not been consolidated. The social innovations generate intangible benefits, mainly qualitative, which makes it difficult to evaluate, even though few authors have indicated the distinguishable characteristics of SI there is not consensus about how to measure it. This document presents the results of a research project with the main objective of identifying the criteria distinguishing SI, and to propose a tool to facilitate its measurement, tracing, and potential assessment. A systematic criteria revision was performed along with a comparative study of eight SI projects from Latin America, prioritizing such criteria. With this information a proposal was developed, including the criteria, associated questions and ponderations. In order to validate the utility of this tool, the evaluation of the project "Implementation of a Solar-Eolic hybrid system in a school in remoted and insolated areas" was performed. The evaluation process allowed to inquire and discover the weaknesses and to explore the limiting causes for every criterion, giving place for recommendations directed to the developers and beneficiaries of the project. Throughout this tool it can be determined whether a project can be considered a successful SI or not; in case of not being successful, the method exerts a simple view of the characteristics that need improvement.

This work compares in a comparative way some advances in the promotion and management of Social Innovation adopted by four Latin American countries, including Panama, in order to generate more knowledge to promote the strengthening and design of new public policies in this ambit. Panama is in the incipient stage of Social Innovation management, compared to the other three countries analyzed: Colombia, Costa Rica and Chile. Among the structural elements addressed are: regulations, the degree of institutionality, mechanisms and incentives to promote social innovation projects and good institutionalized practices. Since 2014, Panama shows its interest and advances in the subject, in the academic and university academic sectors, which can take advantage of social innovation to obtain a greater impact in the country and promote a more inclusive social development. Colombia began efforts to promote Social Innovation in 2007, Chile and Costa Rica in 2014, as well as Panama. These three countries have a higher level of progress in the elements analyzed in their Social Innovation ecosystems than Panama, however, they do not have enough mechanisms to clearly identify the failures that prevent the strengthening of the culture of social innovation and, therefore, the establishment of much more effective public policies.

The Syrian refugee crisis has been termed “the greatest humanitarian crisis of the last century” and countries around the world have stepped up to provide safe haven to millions of Syrians fleeing violence. Canada's unique private sponsorship policy coupled with government sponsorship of refugees saw more than 40,000 welcomed to Canada in a matter of months prompting the need for new processes and solutions. Grassroots organizations emerged, with new partnerships, processes and approaches enabled with new applications of simple technologies and revealed opportunities to leverage and amplify government resources. While fragmented and sometimes primitive these efforts signaled new opportunities to create an innovative “sharing economy” approach. This paper will review the relations between these new initiatives, actors and networks and the opportunities to drive systems change through a social innovation lens.

Two things often observed in children: (1) many do not eat a healthy diet and (2) they like playing video-games. Game-based learning has proven to be an effective method for attitude change, and thus has the potential to influence children's eating habits. This study looks at how, through a series of workshop activities, children themselves can inform the design of such games. Using a co-constructive approach, the study's format promotes creativity and control, enabling children to act as valuable informants for its design. Patterns emerging from the study show that children do indeed understand the concept of healthy eating. Future phases of this work will explore whether they understand how various foods affect their bodies. This information will then inform the design of a video-game that encourages healthy eating.