Social innovation and local development: A meta-synthesis analysis

Abstract

Innovation is constantly related to the development of new products, services and processes capable of highlighting organizations in the competitive landscape. However, traditional innovation is not always able to direct the focus on society's problems. From this panorama, social innovation emerges as a new way of addressing social problems through the articulation of several actors in favor of local development. Considering these two constructs, social innovation and local development, this article seeks, as a general objective, to analyze how social innovation is inserted in the context of local development. For this purpose, a meta-synthesis analysis was performed with case studies that address these themes and their interfaces. The results point to a relationship between social innovation and local development, being the first element necessary to achieve the second. The study developed allowed us to understand that the themes studied relate based on three main points: (1) from a context in which social actors are inserted, (2) emerge a scenario conducive to socially innovative actions that are capable of (3) induce local development.