Social innovations can have a great impact in overcoming
global social and environmental issues. How can we further
maximise their potential?To tackle this question, The Economist Events hosted “Social
Innovation in Action” in Bangkok on October 3rd 2019,
bringing together Asia-based business leaders, policymakers
and social entrepreneurs. Creating engaged employees,
overcoming a lack of data, and forging partnerships emerged
as some of the main themes of the day.Building an engaged workforce can begin with education,
according to Voraprapa Nakavachara, an assistant professor
of economics at Chulalongkorn University. Students equipped
with the skills to innovate and a mindset to lead will likely be
more ready to practice innovation in their future workplaces.But there are other pressing challenges. Many social enterprises
today strongly welcome partnerships, with a hope that
collaboration will result in more sharing of information. The
social innovation sector “still lives in a data dark age”, said Sunit
Shrestha, managing director at the Change Fusion Institute.That data scarcity hinders the innovation process and
development of solutions. “We already know the problem
... but what we lack is the data of who should be our target
audience,” explained Somsak Bookam, founder of Local Alike,
a Thailand-based social enterprise that supports tourism led
by local communities. He views co-operation as the right step
forward, adding that the private sector and governments “are
not competitors, but potential partners”.“Governments play another crucial role as facilitators in
the ecosystem. The Thai government has been particularly
active in working with social enterprises and procuring
their services”, said Pun-Arj Chairatana, executive director,
National Innovation Agency (NIA), which was a sponsor of
the event. Much more can still be done: as for most countries
in the region, “this is just the beginning of Thailand’s social
innovation landscape”, Mr Chairatana remarked.ADVERTISEMENT