What methods to evaluate Social Innovation in mountain areas? A reflection on specific critical issues
Quelles sont les méthodes pour évaluer l'innovation sociale dans les zones de montagne? Une réflexion sur des questions essentielles
Résumé
In the Europe 2020 Strategy, Social Innovation (SI) tries to respond to unmet or unresolved social demands. SI includes new institutional and governance arrangements, new relationships between actors and new fields of activity. Despite increasing recognition of its novel features when compared to classical Schumpeterian innovations, several challenges remain with actual implementation and evaluation of SI. This is due to the lack of recognized mechanisms for assessing performance and standard units of analysis for its impact evaluation. This qualitative paper is based on initial analysis carried out within the EU funded H2020 project Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas. Starting from critical challenges in European marginalised mountain areas, we explore whether and how existing methods, approaches and tools can be used or adapted to propose a new evaluation framework that measures SI and its impacts more accurately and comprehensively. Ad hoc criteria and indicators that capture the specificities of SI and its impacts may thus contribute to formulate more relevant and effective mountain development policies intended to address the specific social demands of these areas.
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