Innovation for Sustainable Development: How the Jonkoping Municipality is Working with Social Innovation for the 2030 Agenda

Innovation has been widely discussed as being extremely important for our drive towards the attainment of the sustainable development goals. This is because, as embed in its definition, sustainable development requires that we shift away from business as usual to find new ways of doing things, that take into consideration the preservation of the three pillars of sustainable development; the economic, social and ecological pillars. Since the publication of the Brundtland Report, there have been more focus, both in terms of research and policy, on the economic and ecological pillars of sustainability than on the social pillar. The thesis carried out a research to determine how Jonkoping Municipalit is working to achieve the sustainable development goals, taking into perspective, the three pillars of sustainability: the ecological, economic, and social pillars. The research found that, even though the Municipality is working with all the goals and dimensions of sustainable development, more progress has been made with the ecological and economic dimensions than the social dimension. Using the Quadruple Helix Model of Innovation Cooperation, this research examines what kind of social innovations that are taking place within Jonkoping Municipality that are tailored for the attainment of the sustainable development goals located within the social pillar of sustainability, and who are kind of actors and activities involved. The research finds that there are some social innovations going within the municipality that are specifically geared towards the 2030 agenda