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Department of Social Sciences

Social innovations compactly: YouTube videos with the highlights of the Network Science now available

Logo Plattform für soziale Innovationen und Gemeinwohlorientierte Unternehmen
The goal of giving equal attention to social and technological innovations in the science system and providing equivalent funding is shared by more and more actors from science, practice and politics. Nevertheless, anchoring social innovation at all levels, in all three missions and across different disciplines will still require a great deal of work and resources. Five videos, most of which are in English, discuss experiences of challenges and possible solutions.

On September 17, more than 70 scientists from all over Germany followed an invitation from the Social Research Center Dortmund at the Technical University of Dortmund to attend the conference in Dortmund as part of the Platform for Social Innovations & Social Enterprises and discussed the role of universities and scientific institutions in the ecosystem of social innovation.

In the keynote speeches by Prof. Simon Teasdale (Queen's University Belfast / Queen's Business School) and Prof. Julia Wittmayer (Erasmus University Rotterdam / Dutch Research Institute for Transitions), successful models and key challenges in establishing the field of social innovation at other universities were presented from an international context. The panel discussion on the role of universities in establishing social innovations was moderated by Prof. Jürgen Howaldt (Director of the Social Research Center at TU Dortmund University). Participants were: Prof. Klaus Becker (Vice President for Research and Knowledge Transfer at TH Köln), Prof. Britta Gossel (Professor at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development), Dr. Ronald Kriedel (Managing Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Transfer at TU Dortmund University), Prof. Julia Wittmayer (Erasmus University Rotterdam / Dutch Research Institute for Transitions).

 

 

 

With two "Hot Topic Workshops" per year on current key topics from international research, the “Platform for Social Innovation and Public Value Enterprises” not only promotes in-depth knowledge transfer between universities, but also a multi-sectoral exchange of knowledge between representatives of universities and non-academic stakeholders. The first virtual workshop on 22.04.2024 was dedicated to the topic of co-creation and open research spaces. Mónica Edwards-Schachter (VIU - Universidad Internacional de Valencia) introduced the concept, while Prof. Andreas Schroer (University of Trier) focused on social innovation labs as places of co-creation in his presentation.

The topic of the second virtual workshop on 11.11.2024 was “Social Innovation Ecosystems”. The conceptual introduction by Dr. Christoph Kaletka (TU Dortmund University) and the insight into the digital ecosystem of social innovation of Florianópolis by Dr. Carolina Andion (Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, Brazil) can be found here:

Both events were organized by the sfs science project team of the SIGU platform (Christoph Kaletka, Katrin Bauer, Ralf Kopp, Daniel Krüger and Marthe Zirngiebl).