Designing a new skills set for women-led rural social innovation: a theoretical framework and research approach

Traditionally, the concept of ‘innovation’ has referred to economic and/or technological progress developed by firms and research centres, taking the form of a “new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisations or external relations” (OECD and Eurostat, 2005). Since the ‘70s, however, the notion of innovation has progressively expanded to include other actors, processes and values, as well as a more comprehensive, participatory approach. This is when the idea of social innovation emerged to describe initiatives coming from civil society (Chiffoleau and Loconto, 2018). At the same time, the “social” element of innovation came to describe socially-oriented improvements in technological and economic innovations. Consequently, social movements adopted the idea of social innovation to carry out experiments aimed at improving quality and conditions of life in different areas of the world: this has been clearly observable in the agricultural sector with the emergence of solidarity economies, fair trade, organic farming and alternative food networks (Seyfang and Smith, 2007). In the end, social innovation has come to describe “a raised awareness of new societal challenges and the necessity of citizen participation in the elaboration of new solutions to social problems” (Chiffoleau and Loconto, 2018), and it must be “designed by and for society” (European Commission, 2013). Social innovation is seen as a process and as a product at the same time (Baker and Mehmood, 2015); others (Polman et al., 2017) separate the process (i.e. the interactions between different stakeholders) from the product (i.e. the reconfiguration of social practices) and its impact or outcome (i.e. the consequence of reconfiguration on societal wellbeing).