Understanding rural context in the social innovation knowledge structure and its sector implementations

Abstract

The concept of social innovation is increasingly being discussed to pursue sustainable development. New terms and keywords are created to cope with new ideas in various contexts. How these terms are developed in the current structure of knowledge and how we can reinterpret the semantic networks with the empirical context are the primary motivation of this paper. The rural social innovation knowledge structure is constructed to understand the phenomena better and cope with future needs. A multi-methods methodology is applied to construct the knowledge structure with the primary method being topic modeling. The results from topic modeling, co-word analysis, and co-citation are combined to co-construct the knowledge structure. The narratives for the built knowledge structure are then developed in the context of rural social innovation to enhance our understanding. This study found three findings. First, the trend of keywords “community”, “governance”, and “rural” have increased significantly in the field of social innovation. Second, an investigation of the intensity of the topics found six dominant groups of topics, namely actor, business model, natural resources, food security, governance, and urban. Third, the co-word analysis shows that the word innovation is closely related to the terms: sustainable development, social entrepreneurship, social enterprise, rural community, electronic commerce, co-design, and social behavior. The mapping of key terms shows that the structure of the global social innovation research landscape is quite complex. However, it can be broken down into five main parts: objectives, inputs, transformations, outputs, and outcomes.

“Wanna Be Provoked”: Inner Peripheries Generators of Social Innovation in the Italian Apennine

“…The main objective is to investigate the distinctive features that characterize SI dynamics of the three inner peripheries under analysis and to determine the extent to which, taking into consideration the relevant diversity characterizing the three cases, they have offered fertile ground for SI to emerge and develop. As far as the What of social innovation is considered, all three cases demonstrate that it is able to influence attitudes, behaviors, and structures [27] and mobilize or create a new value for local assets [79]. The aim of this provocation is to improve the local socioeconomic and environmental conditions and, specifically, to regenerate inner peripheries and combat territorial marginalization and shrinking dynamics.…”

“…Concerning the How of social innovation, in BorgoFuturo and ArtePollino, thirdsector associations have acted in strong cooperation with a wide array of local actors, both institutional and communityones, through the establishment of collaborative middleground spaces that conveyed collective creating learning and implemented major objectives. Drawing on [23], middle-ground spaces are seen as socially innovative arenas, shaping bottom-linked governance interactions between actors from different political levels and spatial scales and mobilizing community participation (see also: [79]). Thus, middle-ground spaces are interpreted as devices for producing translocal learning, namely learning that is place focused, but not restricted to that place and involves ongoing labor in forging and developing connections between different sources, routes, and actors [81].…”

Analysis of Organizational Capacity Development National Food Agency

“…In response to this, the practice of collaboration between institutions is currently commonplace and needs to be improved in the implementation of government functions. Policy intervention from local governments will encourage the necessary collaboration, so that good governance involves relevant actors in terms of scaling up, access to marketing, increasing competence and capital (Kusumastuti et al, 2023).…”

Inovação social e desenvolvimento sustentável no meio rural: uma revisão

“…É importante analisar os artigos, em um período de pelo menos 10 anos. Além disso, os estudos bibliométricos possuem o duplo desafio de analisar tanto o grau de penetração no campo científico, como realizar o seu mapeamento (Kusumastuti et al 2022;Silva et al, 2021).…”