SOCIAL INNOVATION

For most of the last decade, a number of diverse economic prescriptions for many developing countries which recently this name lifted as “emerging nations” have been made. In this regard, it is appropriate to take stock of the 1979 Nobel lecture of the renowned economist T. W. Schultz. He said that “most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matters. Most of the world’s poor people earn their living from agriculture, so if we knew the economics of agriculture, we would know much of the economics of the poor. People who are rich find it hard to understand the behavior of poor people. Economists are no exception”. Most of those prescriptions for many emerging nations have focused predominantly on “getting prices right” by adjusting macroeconomic policy, privatizing state-owned or sponsored enterprises, or opening domestic markets to international trade in agricultural commodities and currencies. The implicit assumption is that structural adjustments will attract foreign capital through the domestic and international private sectors. More recently, evaluation of the interrelationships among macroeconomic policies, firm strategies, and societal issues, particularly the idea of social innovation has been the source of great debate.

It is obvious that the complex and multifaceted societal challenges of poverty can possibly tackled by social innovations. The importance of innovation for development is widely recognized in both the developed and developing nations all over the world. The Second World War devastated Europe and Japan beyond limit. It was the United States’ 1947 “Marchal Plan”- a 20 billion dollar relief to a war-torn Europe which enabled Europe to stand up on its feet again within few years. Europe’s recovery was extraordinary and defied the assumptions of many of the world renowned economists and development experts. It takes less than ten years particularly for Germany, the main culprit for the cause of the war, to rebuild itself and fast assumed the position of one of the top five largest economies of the world.

For Japan, on the other hand, the story is so different. Like Europe, the war totally ruined its economic infrastructures in a way as it was not there in the first place. In addition, Japan was not the beneficiary of the United States’ “Marchal Plan”. The herculean task of the post-war rebuilding was just left on its own shoulders. However, like Germany, Japan also defied every economic and development assumptions and managed to rebuild its economy with a miracle like speed and magnitude. Japan’s postwar rebuilding and economic recovery was like a fairy tale. Japan not only recover its economy, but also conquered the prestigious spotlight of the second largest economy in the world, a position over taken only last year by the current “world economic wonder Tiger” China. The secret for Japan’s post-war economic miracle was none other than its human capital and social values. Japan’s human capital was the only economically valuable asset which was relatively less affected by the war. It was this human capital which was highly instrumental in the process of rebuilding the country afresh and recovers the ruined economy. In this huge and difficult task of rebuilding, Japan gave prior attention to the idea of social innovations. As a result, Japan employed different alternatives and techniques of social innovations which suitable with its policy and societal values to tackle the severe economic woes the war caused and stimulate the recovery.

Maria Clara Couto Soares, an economist from the Economics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in her resent study voiced her concern that despite the visible success of social innovations as mentioned in the above, yet the benefits of innovation are not readily or equally distributed among or within countries. In fact, there has never been so much innovation with so little benefit for far-reaching social welfare. Innovation has created immense capabilities for improving life conditions, in areas such as food production and information technologies. However, these coexist with growing poverty rates, widespread hunger and poor health conditions for much of the world’s population.

One reason for this is the issue of global power relations, which influence how markets are organized and who benefits from technological progress. Innovation systems are not neutral. The effects of purely market-led science and technology efforts and associated innovations tend to aggravate existing inequalities. To enjoy the maximum benefit from it, this needs to be changed. The process of innovation and its place in development must be revisited and aligned with social concerns.

It is indispensable to seeking different alternatives continuously to tackle the multi faceted malaise of poverty through social innovation. In the current age, financial capital and transnational corporations have an unprecedented concentration of power. With market-based philosophy dominating as the logic for social organization, technological progress tends to put pressure on natural resources and societies through a perverse combination of fast accumulation of capital, together with deepening inequalities and environmental degradation.

Social innovation is not merely an act of making available ‘appropriate’ technologies for poor people, but a social and systemic process of developing and introducing new products, processes, technologies and organizational practices within society that are effective solutions for social change. Interventions designed as poverty solutions that lack a systemic approach and ignore participatory methodologies tend to fail to be sustainable in the medium and long term. Social innovation, on the other hand, has a clear focus on social inclusion. It is built and re-applied through processes that are proactive, collective, democratic and characterized by solidarity. And it occurs alongside a strong community awareness of how to deal with problems collectively.

In the process of social innovation, creating the right environment is also equally indispensable. Social innovation means new products, techniques and methodologies that are reapplicable, developed in collaboration with the community and presenting effective solutions for social transformation. The idea of the reapplicability of innovations is different from the scaling up of innovation. Re-applicability implies that when a social innovation is used in a different context to where it was developed, it will necessarily be recreated and adapted for this new context, bringing new values, knowledge and meanings.

This has concrete implications. It means that expanding the reach of small-scale, grassroots innovation requires efforts to build political and institutional capacities in support of the process. It may require interaction with various public and private entities such as local authorities, universities and other organizations specializing in technical assistance and training, as well as funding institutions, nongovernmental organizations (NGOS) and private companies. Often, policy priorities need to be reshaped and political will constructed to allow the changes necessary for re-applicability on a larger scale. This might involve dealing with potential conflicts that may emerge. For example, in the semi-arid regions of Brazil, political parties commonly use water access as a way of eliciting poor families’ political support revealing how expanding the reach of the Brazilian Semi-arid Articulation (ASA) social innovations sometimes interferes with local power structures.

Building institutional structures that can support the re-application of social innovations requires social actors capable of driving such initiatives and ensuring their success. As it is obvious, social innovation will not be fruitful without the employment of the right inputs. At this point, the very crucial and final question is the following. In the process of social innovation, what are the key ingredients for success? They are none other than grassroots participation, as well as strong organization, mobilization and networking.