Economic Geographies of Mountain Areas

Method

How was the inventory done?

Since there is no comprehensive overview of social innovation in mountain regions and existing inventories (see e.g. CIPRA) do not go beyond individual case studies (see e.g. SIMRA), a comprehensive inventory of social innovation in the Bernese Oberland was developed from scratch.

The inventory is based on a database of 979 innovative projects, organisations, offers and initiatives planned and/or implemented in the Bernese Oberland in the period from 1997 to 2018.

To create this database, different sources were brought together:

An analysis grid consisting of 23 assessment criteria was used to identify those social innovations that meet the definition described above. The analysis grid was based on criteria for the categories of collaboration (Is there a new type of collaboration?), novelty (Is the social innovation something new?), idea (What is the specific idea of the social innovation?), Bernese Oberland (Is the social innovation something new for the Bernese Oberland?), improvement in quality of life, change in social relationships and change in power relationships. A total of 68 social innovations were identified. To identify the social innovations, all projects and initiatives in the database were assessed independently by two researchers.

Source:

Tschumi, P., Winiger, A., Wirth, S., Mayer, H., Seidl, I., 2020. Wachstumsunabhängigkeit durch Soziale Innovationen? Eine Analyse potenzieller Wachstumswirkungen von Sozialen Innovationen im Schweizer Berggebiet, in: Lange, B., Hülz, M., Schmid, B., Schulz, C. (Eds.), Postwachstumsgeographien. Raumbezüge diverser und alternativer Ökonomien. transcript Verlag.