Abstract
A redirection towards wellbeing with a view to produce lasting social and economic vitality for the global civilization necessitates moving from conventional economic methods towards innovative solutions, which are necessary to face challenges of today and the future to foster sustainable growth. Social innovation and its agents can be considered as a toolbox which may facilitate a transition by positively influencing wellbeing, developing ways of integrating it into policy, and promoting it as an alternative measure of progress. Social innovation may increase the role of civil society in solving social problems, while sustaining and improving people's wellbeing beyond increasing their welfare in monetary term. By providing up-to-date solutions to challenges ranging from global warming to fair income distribution, and from social innovative entrepreneurs to grass-rooted innovation, social innovation seems to be capable of transforming the society in a way to tackle with a new kind of societal problems, and of exploring new ways to create added value for the economy.
TopBeyond Gdp: The Need For A New Economic Paradigm
In the face of massive advancement in technological and scientific areas, we are witnessing today rapid paradigm change, extensive structural transformation and a dimensional shift in many fields including human being-technology, human being-environment, and human being-material prosperity relationships. As a result of various symptoms relating to this shift, a growing number of scholars and politicians started recently envisaging contemporary approaches to the so-called “state-of-the-art challenges” including resource shortages, demographic realities, and planetary boundaries. In this respect, content, and motivation for economic development has been one of the subjects of intensive discussions. The Beyond GDP measurement agenda will continue to play a critical role in helping us to overcome these challenges (Stiglitz, 2018)
Key Terms in this Chapter
Social Innovation: Social practices focused on ameliorating the lives of the poor and the most disadvantaged.
Think Tank: Non-profit organizations, in general, devoted to analyze topics of common interest to impact on governments and societies.
State-of-the-Art Challenges: They are composed of the study of resource shortages, demographic realities, and planetary boundaries to maximize sustainable economic development.
GACEMER: A socially innovative app to incentive active learning by combining creativity and technology with a higher level of questioning and To Do challenges based on multiple choice questions, photo shooting, video recording, solving puzzles, and watching videos.
KaBOOM!: A U.S.-based national non-profit organization focused on bringing balanced and active play to poor U.S. kids.
World Economic Forum: Founded in 1971, it has the commitment to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, national, regional, local, and industry agendas.
Zero-Carbon Housing: Also known as Energy Housing, it is used to define single family dwellings with a very high energy efficiency rating measured by zero-emissions.