Co-creation of social innovations and new professional institutions: diffusion of therapeutic patient education (TPE) for diabetes in Austria

Patient-centred education in diabetes is a radical social innovation that alters the social and medical relationship between patients and medics. This paper discusses the ways in which institutional work conducted by national and international professional associations has shaped development and diffusion of this social innovation within the Austrian health system. The case study contributes to our understanding of social innovation and institutional change in two respects. First, it highlights the need for purposive institutional work in order to disrupt pre-existing institutions and, thereby, ensure the development and diffusion of a social innovation amongst a community of medical practitioners. Second, the case shows the overtly political work, policing, and educating work that professional associations undertook with funding bodies and key policy-makers in order to develop a national programme for diabetes education

The co-creation of multi-agent social innovations: a bridge between service and social innovation research

Purpose: The research fields of service innovation and social innovation have, until now, been largely disconnected. At the most basic level, a great many social innovations are services, often public sector services with social entrepreneurs organizing and delivering service innovations. As well as this overlap in the focus of research, scholars in both research fields address socio-economic concerns using multidisciplinary perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework that can bridge the two research fields. Design/methodology/approach: Inter-linkages between service and social innovation are shown by identifying research areas in which both find a joint heuristic field. This approach has been illustrated in a set of case studies in the health sector in Europe. Findings: The bridge between social innovation and service innovation research can be built when social innovation is examined through a multi-agent framework. The authors focus on social innovations where the co-creation of novel services is guided by the prominent position taken by citizens, social entrepreneurs or third sector organizations (NGOs or charities) in the innovation process. Of particular interest are the ways in which the interests of individual users and citizens are “represented” by third sector organizations. Practical implications: The case study of the Austrian nationwide public access defibrillation programme provides an exemplar of the process of co-creation by which this social innovation was developed, implemented and sustained. Here the Austrian Red Cross acted on behalf of citizens, organizing an innovation network capable of creating both the demand and the supply side of a sustainable market for the production and safe application of portable automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in Austria. This process involved, first, raising public awareness of the need for portable defibrillators and acting as a user representative when inducing changes in the design of portable AEDs. Later, there was the institutionalization of AED training in every first aid training in Austria, work with local manufacturers to produce this device, and with large user organizations to install AEDs on their premises. Originality/value: The paper develops multi-agent model of innovation that enables one to synthesize key concepts in social and service innovation literatures and, thereby, examine the dynamics of invention and diffusion of social innovations

The servitization of European manufacturing industries

This paper provides new evidence for the servitization of European manufacturing – the trend that manufacturing firms increasingly offer services along with their physical products. We employ input-output data as well as data from a company survey to give a comprehensive picture of servitization across countries and industries. The share of services in the output of manufacturing industries increased in the large majority of European countries between 1995 and 2005 and between 2000 and 2005. Service output of manu-facturing, however, is still small compared to the output of physical products. The highest service shares are found in small countries with a high degree of openness and R&D intensity. EU-12 Member States have lower shares of service output compared to the EU-15. There is a strong link between servitization and technological innovation at different levels. Countries with the highest shares of services on manufacturing output have also the highest R&D intensities at the aggregate level. The service output of these countries consists predominantly of knowledge-intensive services. Highly innovative sectors reveal also the highest share of firms that offer services and the highest turnover generated with services. Examples are electrical and optical equipment, machinery, or the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. At the firm level, we find a U-shaped relationship between firm size and service output, which indicates that small, but also large manufacturing firms have advantages in servitization. Producers of complex, customized products tend to have a higher share of services in output than producers of simple, mass-produced goods. Moreover, firms which have launched products new to the market during the last two years are more likely to realize higher shares of turnover from services compared to companies which launched no products new to the market

The Servitization of European Manufacturing Industries

This paper provides new evidence for the servitization of European manufacturing – the trend that manufacturing firms increasingly offer services along with their physical products. We employ input-output data as well as data from a company survey to give a comprehensive picture of servitization across countries and industries. The share of services in the output of manufacturing industries increased in the large majority of European countries between 1995 and 2005 and between 2000 and 2005. Service output of manu-facturing, however, is still small compared to the output of physical products. The highest service shares are found in small countries with a high degree of openness and R&D intensity. EU-12 Member States have lower shares of service output compared to the EU-15. There is a strong link between servitization and technological innovation at different levels. Countries with the highest shares of services on manufacturing output have also the highest R&D intensities at the aggregate level. The service output of these countries consists predominantly of knowledge-intensive services. Highly innovative sectors reveal also the highest share of firms that offer services and the highest turnover generated with services. Examples are electrical and optical equipment, machinery, or the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. At the firm level, we find a U-shaped relationship between firm size and service output, which indicates that small, but also large manufacturing firms have advantages in servitization. Producers of complex, customized products tend to have a higher share of services in output than producers of simple, mass-produced goods. Moreover, firms which have launched products new to the market during the last two years are more likely to realize higher shares of turnover from services compared to companies which launched no products new to the market

The Servitization of European Manufacturing Industries

This paper provides new evidence for the servitization of European manufacturing – the trend that manufacturing firms increasingly offer services along with their physical products. We employ input-output data as well as data from a company survey to give a comprehensive picture of servitization across countries and industries. The share of services in the output of manufacturing industries increased in the large majority of European countries between 1995 and 2005 and between 2000 and 2005. Service output of manu-facturing, however, is still small compared to the output of physical products. The highest service shares are found in small countries with a high degree of openness and R&D intensity. EU-12 Member States have lower shares of service output compared to the EU-15. There is a strong link between servitization and technological innovation at different levels. Countries with the highest shares of services on manufacturing output have also the highest R&D intensities at the aggregate level. The service output of these countries consists predominantly of knowledge-intensive services. Highly innovative sectors reveal also the highest share of firms that offer services and the highest turnover generated with services. Examples are electrical and optical equipment, machinery, or the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. At the firm level, we find a U-shaped relationship between firm size and service output, which indicates that small, but also large manufacturing firms have advantages in servitization. Producers of complex, customized products tend to have a higher share of services in output than producers of simple, mass-produced goods. Moreover, firms which have launched products new to the market during the last two years are more likely to realize higher shares of turnover from services compared to companies which launched no products new to the market

Innovation Studies, Social Innovation, and Sustainability Transitions Research: From mutual ignorance towards an integrative perspective?

This article is a first attempt towards building an integrative analytical framework to study goal-orientated transformative change (GOTC) processes, defined as system-transforming processes that are guided by the ambition to resolve current or expected future societal challenges. GOTC can only start once a broad range of possible goals are considered by key stakeholders and major relevant actors are committed to act. Hence, there is a need for widening the scope of the current, partial conceptual models to consider the co-evolutionary interactions between technology, economy, and society to better understand and effectively guide and/or assess GOTC. This claim is based on our focussed review of Innovation Studies, Social Innovation, and Sustainability Transitions research. We offer four building blocks for a new, integrative framework to analyse GOTC: its overarching goal; objects, types, and levels of change; mechanisms of change; and a set of criteria to assess change

Innovationsindikatoren und Innovation Leader-Strategie

Die Position Österreichs in internationalen Rankings der technologischen Leistungsfähigkeit wie etwa dem Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) der Europäischen Union ist die eines Innovation Followers. Trotz beträchtlicher Anstrengungen wie etwa einer deutlichen Zunahme der F&E-Ausgaben im letzten Jahrzehnt hat sich Österreichs Position wenig verändert. Es ist auch der Ab-stand zu den Innovation Leaders – Dänemark, Deutschland, Finnland, Schweden und die Schweiz, die allesamt eine besonders gute Position in diesen Rankings haben – nicht kleiner geworden. Vor diesem Hintergrund beschäftigt sich die vorliegende Studie mit der Position Österreichs in ver-schiedenen Vergleichen der technologischen Leistungsfähigkeit von Ländern

Green social innovation – towards a typology

International audienceIt is the ambition of many social innovation initiatives to develop new solutions – often in the form of services – to environmental issues by locally framing often global environmental problems. These green social innovations are very diverse in nature. In order to better systematize this diversity, we first address the questions, what particular challenges do social innovations in the area of the green economy experience. Second, we want to establish a typology of social innovation initiatives that provides insights in the special challenges of social innovations in the green economy. The empirical basis for this contribution is formed by a mapping of 300 social innovation initiatives in the area of environment, energy and mobility, and expert workshops. In order to contribute to an improved understanding of the processes of social innovation and transcend the limits of the single social innovation activity, we study types of social innovations, dynamic patterns of their development and challenges specific to green social innovations