Tag: why-how-what

In recent years, social innovation has been gaining more attention, not only in the scholarly literature and in public discourse but in rural development practice as well. An important reason for this is the greater involvement of civil society in this form of innovation. In this paper, building on definitions of social innovation found in the literature, we focus on the actual processes of social innovation in rural Hungary. The hypothesis behind our research was that a better understanding of how social innovation takes place in practice could increase its presence and efficiency in rural development. To explore these issues, we analysed four different cases of social innovation situated in rural Hungary. Our research shows that, despite common patterns, social innovation is highly dependent on its actual context and on the individual, the agentic engine, who initiates and carries out the innovation. For the capitalisation and the long-term sustainability of an innovative development project the institutionalisation of social networks gathering around it seems to be another crucial factor. Thus, creating an appropriate frame to drive the process all the way from the innovative idea through product development to institutionalisation, possibly in the form of a social enterprise, can be considered ...

Since Hungary’s accession to the European Union (EU) most of the actions in rural areas have complied with the regulations of the funding programmes of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate why the focus of actions has to be changed from funding to learning. The paper is structured as follows. In the introduction, the author explains, in the light of her research experience since 2001, why a change in focus is needed. The main body of the paper shows how the need for this change can be explained from different perspectives. Firstly, structural change in the economy is given as a reason. Secondly, the need for change is explained from the concept of neo-endogenous rural development, i.e. the interplay between local and external forces. Finally the reason for shifting the focus from funding to learning is explained in terms of the endogenous and exogenous factors influencing rural development, based on the framework developed by the EU Framework 7 project ‘RuralJobs’. The paper concludes with some examples of the types of tools that have already been used and actions that should be implemented to achieve this change in focus.