On 2nd October 2015 the University of Talca, Chile and the Chilean think tank CIEPLAN (Corporación de Estudios para Latinoamérica) invited to an international conference on social innovation in Chile – according to the motto ‘from practice to public policy’ (original title: ‘La innovación para Chile. De la praxis a las políticas públicas’). Questions about processes that foster social innovation, the roles of government, civil society, academia and businesses took centre stage during the seminar. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Howaldt, director of the Social Research Centre of TU Dortmund University (sfs), held the keynote, Dmitri Domanski, researcher at sfs, led the panel on the role of businesses in social innovation.

In his keynote Prof. Dr. Jürgen Howaldt pointed out the importance of a systematic governmental fostering of social innovations. He also used examples from the international context in order to illustrate how manifold social innovations are and which challenges must be tackled if social innovations are supposed to diffuse and lead to social change. In this context, Prof. Howaldt referred to the first results of the currently biggest international research project on social innovation ‘SI-DRIVE – Social Innovation: Driving Force of Social Change’ (7th Framework Programme of the EU) that is coordinated by TU Dortmund University – sfs.

Several panels were explicitly dedicated to the role of the different societal sectors. The panel on the role of businesses in social innovation, led by Dmitri Domanski, concentrated mainly on how the shared value concept is implemented in Chile.

Besides the contributions by renowned Chilean speakers that represented i.a. the Chilean Government and some of the country’s leading universities, the debate focused on the experience from other Latin American countries, especially Argentina and Uruguay. Approximately 65 persons participated in the conference.

Link to the Publication ‘Social Innovation in Latin America: The Chilean Case’