Social Innovation: A New Concept for a Sustainable Future?

Abstract

Like all innovative intellectual concepts, the endeavor of developing the concept of Social Innovation starts with a broad debate on what the underlying problem looks like and what the contribution of introducing this new term to the ongoing intellectual discussions about our society should be. One goal of the publication is to capture and highlight the current state of thinking about how to overcome the most pressing challenges of our time. How can we foster innovations which add value to our societies by tackling our very real problems in the field of education, demography, energy, finance, ecological scarcity, as well as social and economic prosperity? It becomes more and more clear that we need a “quantum leap” – a big step forward in innovative thinking in order to achieve a sustainable future – for ourselves but especially for our kids. Such a complex matter of course cannot be easily achieved, sometimes answers seem more confusing and with every new argument new questions arise.