Abstract
This chapter aims to discuss the concepts of digital innovation that bring social impacts. In order to develop this approach, this chapter presents a literature review with the main topics and a case study. The case fits in with digitalization with social impact and reports the case of ColorAdd, which is a tool with a revolutionary, simple, and universal language based on the concept of adding colors, to ensure that there is an accurate understanding of communication whenever color is an identification factor, guidance, or choice, reducing the limitations felt by color-blind people. This tool is used in metro maps, clothing labels, hospitals, catalogs, nutritional traffic lights, medicines, games, computer systems, among many others. As a color identification system, the target audience is people with difficulty in interpreting colors, mostly color-blind people, which are near 350 million individuals.
TopLiterature Review
Innovation
According to Drucker innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service (Drucker, 1985).
This means that innovation is an organized process and is something structured, and that leads to systematic innovation, which is a purposeful and organized pursuit to create changes and are based in the analysis of opportunities.
In other perspective innovation can be seem as a manifestation of its creative capacity and as the result of humanity’s efforts to propose responses to its needs and improve its quality of life (Cajaiba-Santana, 2014).
According to Manual de Oslo innovation can be defined as a new or improved product or process (or a combination of them) that differs significantly from the organization’s previous products or processes, available to potential users (product) or put into use by the organization (process) (OECD/Eurostat, 2018). Innovations can be radical or incremental depends on the adjustments introduced during innovative process. It’s also possible to find other definitions for types of innovation, such as marketing innovation that happens when a new marketing strategy that leads to changes in the package or design of the product, or price and promotion (Kylliäinen, 2019).
Social Innovation
The Bureau of European Policy Advisors (BEPA) outlines Social Innovation (SI) as “innovations that are social both in their ends and in their means” and claims that they stipulate an effective mode to “empower people” and “drive societal change” (BEPA, 2010). Howaldt and Kopp (2012:47) outline SI as “a new combination and/or new configuration of social practices in certain areas of action or social contexts”. A marginally different approach is suggested by Moulaert (2013: 2), who state SI as “innovation in social relations (…) not just particular actions but also (…) outcome of actions which lead to improvements in social relations, structures of governance, greater collective empowerment, and so on”.
Nevertheless, Franz et al. (2012:4), question if all social innovation are “really intended as social and/or using social means”, and suggest examples of SIs, such as fast food restaurants and the internet, which were not planned as being social, neither in their ends nor in their means. In this perspective, the ‘social’ in SI reflects that the object of innovation is fundamentally a social phenomenon (i.e. a social practice or relation, as opposed to e.g. a new technology or product).
The Young Foundation (2012) identified eight aspects of social innovation that differentiate it from other types of innovations:
- 1.
Intersectoral. Social innovation can encompass and occur in all sectors and move between sectors as they development.
- 2.
Open and collaborative. Social innovation has to be inclusive and capable of adding a higher number of actors in their development and implementation.
- 3.
Bottom-up. The communities and beneficiaries are who develop these initiatives, fostering empowerment processes and increasing the efficiency of the solution.
- 4.
Pro-sumption and co-production. There is no explicit limit between who produces and who consumes. Users become producers or suppliers. Change in the vision of who receives the benefit for one where it is co-responsible of producers and consumers for the solution and its maintenance in the long term.
- 5.
Mutualism. It starts with the idea that individual and collective well-being can be obtained only through mutual dependence.
- 6.
Create new roles and relationships. They are developed “with” and “by” users and are not delivered “to” and “to” them—social innovations differentiate by the type of relationships they create.
- 7.
Better use of assets.
- 8.
Develop assets and capabilities.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Color Blindness: The reduced capability to see colors or colors difference.
Digital Transformation: Integrate digital technology into all areas of the business.
Innovation: Implementation of a new idea by introducing a new product or service.
Digitalization: Process of transforming analog in a digital format.
Collaborative Innovation: Process in which multiple participants jointly develop new products with customers and suppliers.
Color Palette: Color range or selection.
Symbolic Language: A communication method that uses characters or images to express concepts.