Social Innovation: Nordic ways of addressing the demographic shift

The SIN project will act as a Nordic platform for investigating conceptual, empirical and policy developments in relation to social innovation with focus on tackling societal problems in demographically vulnerable regions and municipalities across the Nordics. It was eventually summarised in the web resource Social Innovation in local development.

Developing durable responses for tackling demographic challenges represents an institutional challenge in the Nordic countries and for the rest of Europe as well. Indeed, such responses need not only to be grounded on a high degree of coordination of national sectoral policies that have an impact on demography (e.g. social security, education, labour-market…), but also on a certain degree of adaptability and flexibility in order to promote different types of local actions and initiatives.

More applied research is needed for understanding how social innovation (SIN) practices, including economic actors, societal organizations and public authorities, are initiated and sustained over-time and what form(s) these governance arrangements may take in the Nordic rural and small-and-medium-sized-towns regions which tend to be the most vulnerable to demographic change. Social innovation and changing behaviour in the provision of welfare services is a long-term objective also for the Nordic countries, regions and municipalities, due to the demographic changes we are facing.

As stated above, the aim of the SIN project is to act as a Nordic platform for investigating conceptual, empirical and policy developments in relation to social innovation with focus on tackling societal problems in demographically vulnerable regions and municipalities across the Nordics.

Four activities are foreseen in 2015-2016:
Activity 1: review of the scientific literature on social innovation and its relation to territorial development policies and practices
Activity 2: Monitoring of policy developments at national and inter-national levels on the topic of Social Innovation
Activity 3: Implementation of empirical research based on the Social Innovation Biographies methodologies developed in the FP7 SIMPACT project
Activity 4: Synthesis of the results for an academic and policy audience

The final result: Visit the web resource Social Innovation in local development