Barriers to Social Innovation and Ways of Overcoming them in Latvia

摘要

The paper presents the findings of research conducted todetermine the main barriers to social innovation in Latvia andexplore the ways they are overcome. The analysis of thequalitative and quantitative data collected while interviewingsocial innovation projects revealed eight barriers to socialinnovation. Lack of financing, passivity in the society andadministrative and bureaucratic barriers are most frequentlyfaced here. The qualitative content analysis disclosed ninemeans for overcoming the barriers to social innovation. Threeof them: promotional activities, external financial support andexternal support are most common. Each barrier to socialinnovation was analyzed also in regard with the means utilizedfor overcoming it. It showed that there is no universal way toovercome a certain barrier. There could be differentcombinations of means and actions undertaken. However, themost powerful mean in overcoming barriers to social innovationin Latvia turned out to be promotional activities defined as a setof activities aimed to: educate the society, encouragestakeholders to participate in the project, raise awareness aboutthe topicality of the problem and share information aboutsolutions with the project’s target group.