Social innovation and local socioeconomic development: a complex systems approach

Abstract

Introduction: the actor’s articulation in socials networks of knowledge is the characteristic of the social innovation, way which pas throw the territory capacities, in a complex local context. Objective: to design a model for creating social innovation capacities, from the complex systems approach, for the generation of new and improved socially innovative practices in local socioeconomic development. Method: the research-action-participation methodology and analysis from the grounded theory approach are assumed as an epistemological premise, based on the general assumptions of Economic Sociology. Results: the main categories to be taken into account in the capacity creation model are defined, the social innovation capacities to be developed in the Morón Municipality and the patterns grouped into 4 dimensions, from which the modeling attempts on social innovation are outline. Conclusion: the proposed model of social innovation capacities functions as an adaptive ecosystem, whose characteristics emerge, self-organize and co-evolve, depending on the dynamics of the socioeconomic development clusters that comprise it. The analysis from grounded theory and the approach of complex adaptive systems allows us to base an emerging and novel proposal for the experimental approach to social innovation in the current scenarios of local socioeconomic development in Cuba.