Exploring the Variety of Social Innovation Strategies: Case Studies from Thailand and Taiwan
Keywords:
Social Innovation, Case Studies, Thailand, Taiwan, Types of social innovationAbstract
There is widespread agreement among theorists of social innovation that the term encompasses both a product dimension to serve social needs, as well as a process dimension leading to the empowerment of vulnerable groups in society. This definition allows for a number of innovation strategies employed by social enterprises that fulfill these requirements. In this paper we will illustrate how these philosophical premises determine divergent conceptions of the product, process, and empowerment dimensions. Building on seven case studies of social enterprises in Thailand and Taiwan pursuing different social innovation approaches will show that it can be understood as either empowerment of a local community or as systemic change by achieving scale. Both understandings have repercussions on how products and processes are understood across different social innovation approaches. By contrasting the manifestations of these defining features across the social innovation approaches we will attempt to construct a comparative framework in order to understand the relationship
between strategic choice and type of impact.
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Ashford, Graham and Saleela Patkar. 2001. The positive path: Using appreciative inquiry in rural Indian communities. Winnipeg, Manitoba: International Institute for Sustainable Development.
Bottomley, Ruth. 1997. PRA and PLA Approaches: A Case Study with examples of participatory approaches employed by MAG and CMAC in Cambodia, Mines Advisory Group (MAG).
Brown, Tim. 2009. Change by design. New York, NY : HarperBusiness. Brydon-Miller, Mary, Davydd Greenwood, and Patricia Maguire. 2003. “Why action
research?.” Action research 1(1): 11–30.
Bureau of European Policy Advisors (BEPA). 2010. Empowering people, driving change: Social innovation in the European Union. European Commission, http://ec.europa. eu/ bepa/pdf/ publicationspdf/socialinnovation.pdf .
Cameron, Jenny and Katherine Gibson. 2001. Shifting Focus: Pathways to Community and Economic Development: A Resource Kit. Latrobe City Council and Monash University, Victoria.
Campbell, Angus Donald. 2017. “Lay Designers: Grassroots Innovation for Appropriate
Change.” Design Issues 33(1): 30-47. https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI_a_00424
Chambers, Robert. 1994. “Participatory rural appraisal (PRA): Analysis of experience.” World development 22(9): 1253-1268.
Chambers, Robert. 2008. “PRA, PLA and Pluralism: Practice and Theory.” In The SEGA Handbook of Action Research, edited by Peter, R. And Bradbury, H. 2nd
ed, London: SEGA.
Defourny, Jacques, and Marthe Nyssens. 2013. “Social innovation, social economy and social enterprise: what can the European debate tell us?. In The international handbook on social innovation, edited by Frank Moulaert. Amsterdam: Pergamon Publishing.
Defourny, Jacques and Marthe Nyssens. 2016. “Fundamentals for an international typology of social enterprise models.” VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations: 1-29.
Fuge, Mark and Alice Agogino. 2014. “User research methods for Development Engineering: A study of method usage with IDEO’s HCD Connect..” ASME
2014 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference. August 17–20,2014. Buffalo, New York,
USA.. doi:10.1115/DETC2014-35321
Giacomin, Joseph. 2014. “What Is Human Centred Design?.” The Design Journal, 17(4): 606-623. http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/175630614X14056185480186
Gibson-Graham, J.K. .2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.
Haxeltine, Alex et al. 2016. “On the Agency and Dynamics of Transformative Social Innovation.” TRANSIT Working Paper, N. 7.
IDEO. n.d. Human-centered design toolkit. YALI Network, https://yali.state.gov/wpcontent/uploads/sites/4/2015/07/IDEO_HCD_ToolKit.pdf
IDEO. 2015. The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design. Canada: Ideo.org Kayan Community Development Services (KCDS). 2014a. Financial Literacy Project
(Project proposal). Kayan Community Development.
Kayan Community Development Services (KCDS). 2014b. The First Financial Literacy Project Quarterly Report #1 (Project report). Kayan Community Development.
Kretzmann, John P. and John L. McKnight. 1993. Building communities from the inside out. Northwestern University, Evanston, IL: Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Neighborhood Innovations Network.
Manzini, Ezio. 2014. “Making things happen: Social innovation and design.” Design Issues 30(1): 57-66. https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI_a_00248.
Mathie, Alison and Gord Cunningham. 2003. “From Clients to Citizens: Asset-Based Community Development As a Strategy for Community-Driven Development.”
Development in Practice 13(5): 474-86.
McKnight, John L., and John L. Kretzmann. 1996. Mapping community capacity. Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University.
Mulgan, Geoff, Simon Tucker, Rushanara Ali and Ben Sanders. 2007. Social innovation: what it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated. United Kingdom: Oxford Said Business School.
Our City Love. 2018. BCCT Better Business Awards. Social Enterprise Award – Taiwan 2018 Guidance and Criteria. British Chamber of Commerce in Taipei.
Phills, James A., Kriss Deiglmeier and Dale T. Miller. 2008. “Rediscovering social innovation.” Stanford Social Innovation Review 6(4): 34-43.
Pretty, Jules N, Irene Guijt, Ian Scoones and John Thompson. 1995. A trainer’s guide for participatory learning and action. IIED.
Rado, Istvan. 2013. “Sustainable Community Development in Northeastern Thailand. TheInpaeng Network..” In Growing Sustainable Communities: A Development Guide for Southeast Asia. edited by Linda Brennan, Lukas Parker; Torgeir Aleti Watne, John Fien, Duong Trong Hue and Mai Anh Doan, 177-194. Australia: Tilde University Press.
Rado, Istvan. 2016. “Sustainable Change Through Socially Responsive Design.” In New Voices in Global Studies and Wellbeing 2016: Equity in a Changing world, . 161-65. Pathumthani: Science Park Convention Center.
Sabato, Sebastiano, Bart Vanhercke and Gert Verschraegen 2015. The EU framework for social innovation-Between entrepreneurship and policy experimentation. No. 15/21. Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
Sanders, Elizabeth B.N. and Pieter Jan Stappers. 2008. “Co-creation and the New Landscapes of Design.” CoDesign 4(1):5-18. doi: 10.1080/15710880701875068.
Seri Thongmak. n.d. Walking into the Unknown. Experiences of Learning and Growth. Bangkok: Pattanarak Foundation.
Smith, Rebecca and Kendra Leith. 2014. D-Lab Scale-Ups User Research Framework. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Young Foundation. 2012: “Defining social innovation.” A deliverable of the project:“The theoretical, empirical and policy foundations for building social innovation in Europe”(TEPSIE), European Commission–7th Framework Programme. Brussels: European Commission, DG Research.
Thorpe, Adam and Lorraine Gamman. 2011. “Design with society: why socially responsive design is good enough.” CoDesign 7(3-4): 217-230. doi.org/10.1080/15710882. 2011.630477
Turner, Anne M., Blaine Reeder and Judith Ramey. 2013. “Scenarios, Personas and User Stories: User-centered Evidence-Based Design Representations of Communicable Disease investigations.” Journal of biomedical informatics 46(4): 575-584. doi. org/10.1016/j.jbi.2013.04.006
Vechakul, Jessica and Alice Agogino. 2013. “A Comparison of Two Transdisciplinary Human-Centered Design Approaches for Poverty Alleviation.” In The Future of
Transdisciplinary Design: Proceedings of the Workshop on “The Future of Transdisciplinary Design”, University of Luxembourg, Springer International Publishing.
Waldman-Brown, Anna et al. 2016. “Democratizing Technology: The Confluence of Makers and Grassroot Innovators.” In Proceedings for the International Conference on Creativity and Innovations at Grassroots, IIM-Ahmedabad, India, 2016.
Westley, Frances and Nino Antadze. 2010. “Making a Difference: Strategies for Scaling Social Innovation for Greater Impact.” Innovation Journal 15(2).
Whitney, Diana D. and Amanda Trosten-Bloom. 2010. The power of appreciative inquiry: A practical guide to positive change. United States: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Zappalà, Gianni and Mark Lyons. 2009. Recent approaches to measuring social impact in the Third sector: An overview. Sydney: Centre for Social Impact.
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Published
2020-09-11
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Rado, Istvan, and Shekh Mohammad Altafur Rahman. 2020. “Exploring the Variety of Social Innovation Strategies: Case Studies from Thailand and Taiwan”. ASIAN REVIEW 33 (1):56-78. https://so01.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/arv/article/view/243606.
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