Interplay of Technological and Social Innovation

The concept of innovation has become broader, across fields and across era, both in terms of ‘means’ and ‘ends’. The mainstream literature emphasizes technological change as driver of economic change and performance. Looking beyond the mere technological and economic aspects, the concept of social innovation emphasizes social processes as ‘means’ and social purposes as ‘ends’. We begin by discussing the difference between technological and social innovation, before proceeding further to investigate the interplay between technological innovation and social innovation. We will argue that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are used in social innovation in many ways and that more investments would be required to fully integrate technology into social innovation processes and phases. The co-evolution of technological and social innovation highlights the importance of policies in support of social innovators, innovation networks as well as technology and knowledge intensive inputs and outputs.