How can digital ecosystems support social innovation? This workshop, co-organised by Douglas Wegner, Senior Fellow at the College, and his tandem partner Jürgen Howaldt (TU Dortmund University), assembles different perspectives of invited experts in the field of social innovation. Examining cases in Latin America and Europe, the workshop addresses success factors, challenges, and opportunities.
The concept of innovation ecosystem has been used to describe a set of heterogeneous actors connected in a self-organised environment, in which these actors aim to produce joint value through the exchange of knowledge, combination of resources and collaboration. Although the concept has widely been used to refer to technological innovation, social innovation initiatives can also benefit from ecosystems since they reunite actors whose complementarities and resources can be combined to ease, accelerate, and disseminate social innovations. More recently, researchers and practitioners have directed attention to social innovation digital ecosystems (SIDEs), i.e., ecosystems “that provide the interaction of a community formed by actors whose objective is to develop social innovations to meet society's challenges through a common technological platform and a collaborative, inclusive, and open process” (Chueri, 2021). In this workshop, participants will discuss how digital ecosystems can support social innovation and what challenges such ecosystems must overcome to effectively foster and disseminate social innovation initiatives. Attendees will learn from experts in the field of social innovation as well as from cases in Latin America and Europe. As a main outcome of the discussions, the workshop aims to produce a policy brief that summarises recommendations for practitioners and policymakers and offers researchers a set of suggestions for future research.
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Christoph Kaletka is the Deputy Director of TU Dortmund University’s Social Research Center. His main fields of work are social innovation, digital inclusion, and digital learning spaces. Habilitated at TU Dortmund University, Christoph Kaletka is teaching innovation, social innovation and digital inclusion at the faculties of social sciences and rehabilitation sciences. He is Editorial Board member of the „European Public & Social Innovation Review (EPSIR)“ journal and advisory board member of „All Digital“, the umbrella organisation of European digital learning centres. He has co-edited the “Encyclopedia of Social Innovation” as well as the two volumes of the “Atlas of Social Innovation”.
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Carolina Andion is a full professor in the Department of Public Administration at the State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC), Brazil, and holds a PhD in Human Sciences from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil. She has also been a visiting researcher at the University of Valencia and Fundação Getúlio Vargas, São Paulo, and a leader of the Social Innovation Center in the Public Sphere and coordinator of the Social Innovation Observatory of Florianópolis (OBISF).
Laura has a master's degree in Consumption Psychology from the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). She has been a researcher at imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), since 2018 where she worked on several H2020 and Horizon Europe projects together with more local projects. She started a PhD track in 2024 based on the Horizon Europe "Urban ReLeaf" project. Laura's work focuses on inclusive citizen engagement in the digital society. Her expertise revolves around citizen and user participation (co-creation processes, usability assessment, participatory studies, Citizen Science, etc.). Within her PhD track, Laura is specifically looking at the participatory aspects of urban transitions, and the role of urban / digital commons and sociotechnical imaginaries in this process. As part of the project "Brussels by us", she investigated the collaborative platform effectiveness in reaching Social Innovation outcomes.
Douglas Wegner is a professor of Administration at Fundação Dom Cabral, a business school in Minas Gerais, Brazil. He is currently Senior Fellow at the College for Social Sciences and Humanities, and co-leader of the track on “Interorganizational and Interpersonal Relations” at Anpad, the National Association of Graduate Programs and Research in Administration. He is also member of the research group Collab4Good, which focuses on grand challenges, collaborative governance, innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurial ecosystems, social innovation, and inter-organisational cooperation. His current research interests include collaborative strategies and networks, network governance, and network orchestration. Besides the academic activities, Douglas worked as a business consultant, forming and developing strategic networks in Brazil. Douglas Wegner holds a PhD in Business Administration from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (2011), Brazil.
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Prof. Douglas Wegner
Fundação Dom Cabral (Brazil) | Business Administration
E-mail: douglas.wegner@college-uaruhr.de
Douglas Wegner is a professor of the Professional Master in Administration at Fundação Dom Cabral, a business school in Minas Gerais, Brazil. He is currently co-leader of the track on “Interorganizational and Interpersonal Relations” at Anpad, the National Association of Graduate Programs and Research in Administration, and member of the research group Collab4Good, which focuses on grand challenges, collaborative governance, innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurial ecosystems, social innovation, and inter organisational cooperation. His current research interests include collaborative strategies and networks, network governance, and network orchestration. He also works as associate editor of Revista Base for the topics of Collaboration and Interorganisational Relations. Besides the academic activities, Douglas worked as a business consultant, forming and developing strategic networks in Brazil. Douglas Wegner holds a PhD in Business Administration from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (2011), Brazil. He was a visiting researcher at TU Dortmund University (2019) and the University of Sevilla (2016) and published various articles in peer reviewed journals.
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Prof. Jürgen Howaldt
TU Dortmund University, Social Research Centre Dortmund | Sociology, social innovation research
E-mail: juergen.howaldt@tu-dortmund.de
Prof. Jürgen Howaldt
TU Dortmund University, Social Research Centre Dortmund | Sociology, social innovation research
E-mail: juergen.howaldt@tu-dortmund.de
Jürgen Howaldt is the director of the Social Research Centre Dortmund and professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of TU Dortmund University. He is an internationally renowned expert in the field of social innovation. His research fields include social sciences-based innovation research and social innovation, new management concepts, and organisational development and consulting. As a sociologist, his internationally oriented research activities focus on the significance of social innovations for society as well as on socio-technical change processes in various social fields.
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