Goals

The project has the following objectives:

1. Capture social innovations

The project will create an inventory of social innovations in the Bernese Oberland, with a special focus on tourism, the construction industry and the health sector. To this end, social innovations in the regions will be sought and compiled according to defined criteria. Some social innovations will be selected from the inventory as case studies for further investigation.

2. Analysis of the framework conditions

The inventory forms the basis for the analysis of the political, social, economic and ecological conditions under which the social innovations were created, as well as the actors involved. In this way, the spatial transformation processes within which the social innovations take place are recorded and analysed.

3. Evaluation of the effects

Another objective is to analyse the socio-economic impact of these transformation processes in the regions (employment, niche products, access to financing, solutions for basic needs, maintenance and development of public infrastructure, etc.).

4. Analysis of the link to growth

On the basis of the framework conditions and the effects, it will be worked out how social innovations are related to growth determinants in the regions. In this way, a contribution is to be made to the elaboration of the as yet unexplored conceptual links between social innovations and growth in structurally disadvantaged regions such as mountain regions.