Integration of social innovation creation in higher education for enhancing of economic development in Latvia

Abstract

Abstract. Lately, the European Commission has developed a number of policies, programmes and initiatives that have contributed to empowering citizens and organisations to address social issues, and the new European strategic framework for 2014-2020 focuses on intelligent, durable development. The article describes the role of social innovation in the European Union and presents a study of the main approaches for enhancing the creation of social innovation in Latvia. The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of social innovation implementation through higher education institutions as education is an essential prerequisite for economic development and achieving higher standard of living. The current research employed monographic method, analysis and synthesis, as well as scientific induction and deduction methods to summarize the theoretical findings and basic guidelines of strategic documents, thus developing an extensive discussion on the problems how to motivate young society to get more actively involved in solving of social problems. The current research is a continuation of several related research projects implemented in scope of the National Research Program 5.2. EKOSOC-LV "Involvement of the Society in Social Innovation for Providing Sustainable Development of Latvia". The study shows that in Latvia's situation the society has many obstacles to use opportunities of bottom-up approach, thus giving preference to top-down approach relying rather on top-down scenario than on self-initiated scenario of social innovation creation. Consequently, it is important to integrate social awareness in higher education by strengthening the collaboration among education, state institutions and business entities, thus more efficiently involving students in searching solutions to really existing and topical social problems in Latvia.