Caracteristici ale inovaţiei în serviciile sociale, ca varietate a inovaţiei sociale [Characteristics of Innovation in Social Services, as Action of Social Innovation]

It is widely acknowledged that social services can’t fulfill their mission to empower people and to promote both social inclusion and development without innovation. Thus, innovation is the key to effective and efficient social services. The social innovation is dominated by three dimensions (the social, the economic and the political one) and ruled by its relational characteristic. The social innovation is a process with six stages: diagnoses and prompts, proposals and ideas, prototyping and pilots, sustaining, scaling and diffusion, systemic change. The evaluation of social innovation must be grounded on effectiveness and should start within the process, not only at the end of the process, minding the relational characteristic of social innovation. The final gain is to solve societal problems, beyond individual needs, changing cultural and institutional behavior and contexts. The innovation in social services may even save the welfare state and the social order from the Neoliberalism that threatens to create dangerous margin groups. Romania is a very generous playground for innovation in social services, having in mind the world innovation index country score, the world happiness index country score and the social eagerness for socio-liberal economic policy.



Keywords: social innovation, innovation in social services, effective social innovation, radical and incremental social innovation, stages and evaluation of social innovation