Role of Universities for Inclusive Development and Social Innovation : Experiences from Sweden

This chapter explores how universities in Sweden have approached the challenges of inclusive development and social innovation. Whereas the higher education system has been quite successful in providing access to previously excluded groups, the concept of social innovation applied to solving social problems has not yet been integrated into the policies and practices of the university innovation system. The Third Mission of universities is generally interpreted as research and innovation aimed at developing and commercializing technical products rather than supporting more intangible and complex social innovation activities. The universities’ innovation systems for commercial innovations are well developed but organizationally and operationally disconnected from social innovation activities. At the core of this separation of social innovation activities from the work of technology transfer offices at universities is the tendency of regarding commercial innovation as organically separated from social innovation. Instead, a model should be adopted that acknowledges that although much of technological innovation is distinctly different in process, aim, and outcome compared to social innovation, there exists a considerable overlap between the two types of innovation