Social Innovation and Higher Education: From Theory to Practice

Since the late 20th century, humanity has faced several challenges that make us feel increasingly vulnerable. Increasing territorial and social disadvantages, lagging regions and municipalities, the drastic deterioration of the quality of life of the people living there, economic processes and sustainability issues are matters that frequently generate wide public debates in society and, concurrently, necessitate social collaboration. Therefore, recent years have seen a growing focus on social innovations that can respond to these challenges in a complex way. In parallel, in response to changing socio-economic expectations, by the end of the 20th century, higher education institutions faced several new challenges. The “third mission” of higher education institutions, that is, the concept of social responsibility of higher education institutions fits in with these activities. Since the author has been working in higher education for 25 years, she has also become interested in the social responsibility of higher education institutions. She has also involved predominantly in social innovation projects, she participate in research on social innovation and do so in a higher education context – it is these two areas that shall be linked in this book. The aim of the present volume is thus to fill a gap by linking the fields of social innovation and higher education, and thereby facilitate reflection for stakeholders of higher education, innovation practitioners, policymakers and the general public interested in this subject matter.