Catalysing social resources for sustainable changes. Social innovation and community centred design’

Social innovation is a form of innovation driven by social demands rather than by the market and/or autonomous techno-scientific research, and generated more by the actors involved than by professional researchers. Given this very rough initial definition, we can easily observe that social innovation has always been and will continue to be a normal component of every possible society. Nevertheless, though social innovation has always existed, there are two good reasons to focus on it today. The first is that social innovation initiatives are multiplying and will become even more common in the near future, in answer to the growing challenges of sustainability. The second is that, as contemporary societies change, the nature of social innovation itself is also changing, opening new and until now unthinkable possibilities.