Why is research in social innovation important for you?
For me, social innovation is a true aggregator of all of my experiences, interests and long term goals. As an entrepreneur, civil society and public administration expert with over twenty years of experience in socio-economic development, I can say that through social innovation and our regional organisation, Social Innovation Lab (SIL), it all comes together – bringing together different experts and sectors to research, analyse, create new partnerships, develop and test new solutions. In Croatia, the time is ripe for cooperation. People have realized that each stakeholder of a partnership can bring in an added value and finally can contribute to a stronger social impact.
How is your work related to social innovation?
As the president of Social Innovation Lab, a regional organisation working on social innovation in the Western Balkans, with my two colleagues and co-founders of SIL in Serbia and Macedonia, I am working on a daily basis to promote, map and influence policy change in Croatia. I do this work in my region on all levels. Moreover I mobilise experts in different sectors and areas of expertise. Basically, in the last few years it was all about meetings, talking and explaining what social innovation is and why it is important. We also try to reach the systemic level and even policy change – for example through writing recommendations for the Croatian Ministries. Hopefully these recommendations will be accepted in the new EU-co-financed Operating Programmes for Croatia. In that respect, I can see some progress, not just in terms of peoples’ perception and recognition of social innovation but also in terms of actual allocation of funds for the next EU-funding period. This will help bring social innovation to the next level.
Another exciting thing is that we are currently working intensively on developing a social innovation network of practitioners in the region through the Social Innovation Balkans online platform but also organising different events and teaching social innovation at mostly private universities that are more open to new concepts and ideas. For us, being a member of the global SI-DRIVE project means a lot – not only because SIL is a part of a great consortium, but also because as one of few NGOs in this region that is involved in a large FP 7 project, we can influence and encourage other NGOs to follow this example. Hopefully they will apply to Horizon 2020 projects and really expand their horizons beyond local and regional perspectives.
What is the biggest challenge for social innovation to become alive?
Looking from the perspective of our region, but also in the context of Europe, I think that one of the biggest challenges is in identifying efforts that meet the SI criteria, both in terms of impact as well as methodology. There are not yet well-defined indicators for mapping and measuring the impact of social innovation. In our case, this slows down regional networking by actors that promote innovative, community-based solutions. It also prevents the sharing of experiences and best practices – even between well-established organisations. For our region, sharing information and partnering is still a great challenge and organisations mostly see themselves as competitors and not collaborators. Obviously, this will change with the efforts through SI-DRIVE and other projects. Another issue is, in my opinion, that many social innovators often do not recognize themselves as such and as a result do not promote relevant practices. However, there are in fact a surprising number of social innovations and social innovators that should be further promoted and supported. This is really a key, not just to promote, but also create positive conditions for social innovations to organically start grow, test and sustain. It is really important to have pilot or demonstration projects and good examples to further raise awareness and motivate others to become social innovators. With this compounding effect I do believe that social innovation could become really important and have a serious impact on socio-economic challenges.
What kind of impacts do you expect from social innovations on our societies?
Many, otherwise I would not work on this with all of my heart. As I mentioned, impact could be really great in all sectors and fields especially those that need the most immediate attention such as employment, education, health and ageing but also in improving the overall quality of life – which is the ultimate goal of social innovation. Croatia for example is facing serious financial cuts in all areas, in particular public administration with mass needs to reform education, which will have a serious impact on peoples’ life’s. This is exactly the time to start taking a different approach to develop new solutions – and this is where social innovation can make a difference.