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Social Innovations in the extended Lake Constance area – an overview of the current activities
(2018)
In recent years the importance of social innovation for societies is rising. Therefore, the European Union realized, that political goals can be successfully achieved through social innovations.1 The concept is offering solutions for social challenges broadly based and in a variety of different fields Thus, the focus of this paper will be to identify social innovation activities in the Lake Constance area and the problems which are being solved through those activities. It will therefore provide a quantitative analysis of the identified projects including the main idea of the activity as well as information about the innovators. The key outcomes of this paper are, that social innovators are mainly focusing on current political challenges such as the refugee crisis. Problems which the society is already facing for a longer period of time, are less focused. It could further be identified, that the majority of social innovators are students or graduates. Also, most of the activities have their origin in bigger cities such as Stuttgart, Karlsruhe or Heidelberg.
The relation between Frugal Innovation and Sustainability is a widely discussed topic in current academic literature. To assess the correlation between these two concepts, a sample of the most frequently mentioned Frugal Innovations was selected. The criteria to evaluate the sustainability potential for each of these cases was built upon the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a global reference indicator. Frugal Innovations among the banking, transport, energy, ICT, water, appliances and healthcare sectors were evaluated. The results suggested a positive contribution and impact of Frugal Innovations towards economic, social and environmental development.