Doris Schartinger, Doris Wilhelmer, Dirk Holste and Klaus Kubeczko
Foresight often encompasses participative approaches for decision making. This paper aims to give a first overview of the authors’ research on immediate learning and networking in…
Abstract
Purpose
Foresight often encompasses participative approaches for decision making. This paper aims to give a first overview of the authors’ research on immediate learning and networking in the context of foresight. The paper seeks to introduce a practical concept for an accompanying social research of a participatory foresight process for empirically identifying and mapping impacts; and to present empirical results from the study of a specific foresight process.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors apply three approaches to analyze impacts. Accordingly data were gathered in moderated workshops for process analysis; structured telephone interviews for qualitative analysis; and surveys for social network analysis.
Findings
The accompanying social research produced direct insights on experiences and knowledge acquisition of participants in a large, complex foresight process, as well as a measurable increase of personal ties in this process. This research shows that the perception of the wider spectrum of actors in a social system, as well as their rationales and approaches, are one identifiable and crucial achievement of participative foresight processes.
Research limitations/implications
This research focuses on immediate learning impacts, while additional impacts of mid‐ or longer‐term scales were not captured in this study. Accompanying social research (e.g. longitudinal studies) of broader scale would be beneficial to foresight research and process design.
Originality/value
The authors use a specific foresight process to analyze its immediate impacts. They introduce and demonstrate ways forward to use practical concepts for impact description, empirical data acquisition, and how it relates to underlying process design. The results are relevant for foresight project managers, process counselors and accompanying social research.
Details
Keywords
Paul Windrum, Doris Schartinger, Luis Rubalcaba, Faiz Gallouj and Marja Toivonen
The research fields of service innovation and social innovation have, until now, been largely disconnected. At the most basic level, a great many social innovations are services…
Abstract
Purpose
The research fields of service innovation and social innovation have, until now, been largely disconnected. At the most basic level, a great many social innovations are services, often public sector services with social entrepreneurs organizing and delivering service innovations. As well as this overlap in the focus of research, scholars in both research fields address socio-economic concerns using multidisciplinary perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework that can bridge the two research fields.
Design/methodology/approach
Inter-linkages between service and social innovation are shown by identifying research areas in which both find a joint heuristic field. This approach has been illustrated in a set of case studies in the health sector in Europe.
Findings
The bridge between social innovation and service innovation research can be built when social innovation is examined through a multi-agent framework. The authors focus on social innovations where the co-creation of novel services is guided by the prominent position taken by citizens, social entrepreneurs or third sector organizations (NGOs or charities) in the innovation process. Of particular interest are the ways in which the interests of individual users and citizens are “represented” by third sector organizations.
Practical implications
The case study of the Austrian nationwide public access defibrillation programme provides an exemplar of the process of co-creation by which this social innovation was developed, implemented and sustained. Here the Austrian Red Cross acted on behalf of citizens, organizing an innovation network capable of creating both the demand and the supply side of a sustainable market for the production and safe application of portable automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in Austria. This process involved, first, raising public awareness of the need for portable defibrillators and acting as a user representative when inducing changes in the design of portable AEDs. Later, there was the institutionalization of AED training in every first aid training in Austria, work with local manufacturers to produce this device, and with large user organizations to install AEDs on their premises.
Originality/value
The paper develops multi-agent model of innovation that enables one to synthesize key concepts in social and service innovation literatures and, thereby, examine the dynamics of invention and diffusion of social innovations.