Fostering social innovation through e-collaboration

Increasing awareness in social problems and the high complexity of social challenges has boosted social innovation efforts in recent years. Social innovation refers to new and innovative solutions to social problems that create social value, involve public good, and affect the society, mostly developed by participation of stakeholders who have interests in the problem. Social innovation leads to social value created through a series of collaborative efforts of public, private, and non-governmental organizations. This chapter highlights the importance of collaboration in social innovation and examines the role of e-collaboration as a group coordination and communication mechanism in the social innovation processes. The first part of the chapter presents evidence on what social innovation is and describes how social innovation intertwines with collaboration. The second part of the chapter defines the key conceptual elements of e-collaboration and explores how e-collaboration can foster social innovation concerning each conceptual element.