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Add to Preferred SourcesSocially focused innovators across Europe have called on the European Union to put innovation at the heart of its strategy to achieve a ‘social triple-A rating’– an ambition set out by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in 2014 to give greater prominence to the bloc’s social priorities.
Carlos Moedas, the European Commissioner for Research, Science, and Innovation was presented with The Lisbon Declaration, a set of 10 policy ideas for how the EU can promote social innovation, on 6 November at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
“Innovation today is about purpose, about doing something that can fulfill you as a human being. In the European Union, we are going to put more money into social innovation, not because it’s trendy, but because we believe that the future of innovation is about social innovation,” said Commissioner Moedas.
According to practitioners, social innovation is about using innovation to tackle societal challenges such as climate change or migration, and – crucially – doing it in a way that actively involves the people who will be affected.
The 10 ideas in the declaration, which authors say have been shaped by more than 350 people from 19 EU countries, include setting up fellowships to pay salaries to people working on community projects so that they don’t work for free, and working with social innovation start-ups and SMEs when it comes to public procurement.
But speaking to Horizon on the sidelines of the summit, Armelle Ledan from the European Association for Information on Local Development, who presented the report to the Commissioner, said that it’s not just about funding.
“Resources, support, legitimacy and having policymakers giving support symbolically … is really important because it can prove that social good is at the heart of society.”
Original source: Horizon
Published on 7 November 2018