11.4.2012
New FidiPro research project - Service and social innovations – policy needs and potential impacts

Since the mid-1990s, research into service innovation has rapidly accumulated. Also the inter- linkages between service innovation and organizational innovation have been increasingly highlighted. The next big challenge is how to take a step forward from the level of companies and organizations to broader levels on which today’s most urgent issues need to be solved. It means that service innovations have to be studied and developed hand in hand with social and system innovations. Our FiDiPro project aims to tackle this challenge.

Research project includes three main goals:
  1. fostering service, social and system innovations through an improved understanding of their nature,
  2. developing methods and tools for the examination and management of service, social and system innovations and for the evaluation of their impacts, and
  3. building up Finnish policy competences in harnessing the benefits of service, social and system innovations.

The research activities include modelling the social and system innovations, case studies and utilization of statistical sources, and policy analysis. Case studies will cover both Finland and a number of benchmarking countries.

The project is carried out in collaboration between University of Vaasa/SC-Research and VTT in 2012-2014. The invited FidiPro Professor is Luis Rubalcaba from the University of Alcalá, Spain. He has vast experience in theoretical, statistical and policy-oriented studies on services and social innovation. As a former chairman of RESER (European Association for Services Research), he has close relationships to the European service research community, which is important for our goal of tightening international collaboration.

For further information, please contact Jari Kuusisto, jari.kuusisto(a)sci.fi and/or visit the following website addresses:

www2.uah.es/luis_rubalcaba/en/inicio.htm
www.uah.es/
www.fidipro.fi/pages/home.php

 

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