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Top1. Introduction
The 2020 coronavirus disease, rapidly transformed into the COVID-19 pandemic, has generated an unprecedented health, social and economic crisis all over the world. Romania has been hit hard, being one of the poorest countries in the EU, with a large diaspora and a fragile health system. Few papers address the impact of the pandemic in Romania, most of them focusing on economic issues. The European Commission's forecast (2020) shows that Romania's GDP will decrease by 5.2 percentage points in 2020, unemployment will increase by over 50%, and the budget deficit will reach -10.3% of GDP. Albu et al. (2020) estimates a reduction in GDP between 5 and 7.9%, depending on the magnitude and dynamics of the pandemic, while the October 2020 IMF report estimates a reduction in GDP of 4.8%. In order to limit the spread of the virus, Romania adopted measures similar to other European countries, mainly social distancing, wearing a mask, self-isolation measures and quarantine. According to Dascalu (2020), the success of these measures was affected by the return of over 250,000 Romanians abroad, by the reduced access of the rural population to health services, by the inadequate management of hospitals and by sociocultural factors, such as: corruption, lack of trust in authorities and hospitals, social exclusion, limited access to education and the conservative doctrine of the Orthodox Church. On the psychological side, Druica et al. (2020) points to the prevalence of an optimism bias in Romania, with significant impact on how the risk of contagion is assessed, respectively on how prevention measures are respected at an individual level. All these factors listed suggest the need for public social innovation and for robust governance responses to turbulent problems (Ansell et al., 2020a), in order to increase trust in state capacity (Capano et al., 2020; Vâlsan et al., 2020), inclusion and cooperation between stakeholders (Ansell et al., 2020b). The impact of the pandemic on companies also favors the emergence of new, innovative forms of public-private cooperation. Thus, studies show that the disruptive features of Covid-19 will accelerate the digital transformation, shorten value chains and accentuate the inclination towards cooperation. Companies will pursue greater control of the supply chain, integration of local suppliers and expanding cooperation with all stakeholders, including authorities (Seetharaman, 2020, McKinsey, 2020, Shutt and Liddle, 2020). The turbulent, uncertain and conflicting environment is precisely the one that favors the emergence of public innovation laboratories as change agents within the public sector (Tõnurist, Kattel and Lember (2017). Gasco (2017) validates, based on the case of two PSI labs from Spain, the hypothesis according to which they fulfill the role of innovation intermediaries that facilitate the interaction between different stakeholders (including citizens) in order to identify innovative solutions for urban development. Similarly, Vrabie and Ianole-Calin (2020) investigate innovation capacity mechanisms in a comparative case study of PSI labs from Boston (US) and Cluj-Napoca (Romania), with emphasis on issues like scalability and sustainability.
Concerning the current challenges, social distancing and self-isolation measures have significantly changed the face of regions and cities in many countries (Acuto, 2020). An example of social innovation driven by the challenges posed by Covid-19 is the case of Hong Kong. The lack of trust in the government led to the mobilization of civil society and local communities, which capitalized on the lessons learned from the SARS experience since 2003. Naturally, cooperation was created between District Councilors, local organizations and companies and formed community-based networks that have acted against the spread of the disease. Masks sharing events were organized to distribute masks to the most at-risk groups, a community-based mobilization for mutual assistance was implemented and a community-based network created a real-time dashboard to monitor the situation caused by Covid-19 based on information available on the internet (Wan et al., 2020). Such community-based networks have formed around the world, as evidenced by multiple sources available online, such as The National Democratic Institute, Public health Matters from Great Britain or Seattle Foundation from USA. Unlike Hong Kong, in the European Union local communities cooperate with local authorities in combating the pandemic and its effects. Thus, it is unsurprising that Covid-19 adds increased pressures for the political and administrative leadership of city governments to ensure both quick responses and long term strategies: “how leaders respond to the crisis could permanently shift the economic, social, and health foundations of their communities” (Dirani et al., 2020:380).