Social, Cultural and Religious Innovation

Social innovation’ aims to directly address unmet social needs in new ways by developing or enhancing new products and services through the direct engagement of the people who need and use them, typically through a bottom-up process. ‘Cultural innovation’ sounds like an oxymoron. It is not, though. It is something real that tops up social and technological innovation. How can we measure ‘cultural innovation’? The answer is, as a result of co-creation. Items of cultural innovation are: content providers such as museums, science centers and libraries, as well as processes triggered by issues such as cosmopolitanism, inclusiveness, mobility, migration, heritage and creativity. ‘Religious innovation’ is the result of the dynamic texture of religious communities and traditions, as well as of the contextuality of social, cultural and technological innovations, thus avoiding reductive definitions of either religion or innovation. Following an action-research approach, the Center for Religious Studies of Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, Italy, has focused its research on the role of religious innovation in processes of social change. The objective of this paper is to develop and test a methodology to measure the impact of technology transfer from basic research to industry application and its cultural and socio-economic effects. The argument embraces five parts: Introduction, Social Innovation, Cultural Innovation, Religious Innovation, Conclusion.