Building Teams for Social Innovation in Smart Territories

Abstract

Territorial intelligence is a challenge for communities that seek to revitalize their sociocultural and commercial fabric through practices that improve the quality of life. Organizing and training citizens by preparing them for social innovation and project development is essential to ensure the sustainability of these initiatives and their link with other sectors. Innovation arises when actors get involved in identifying their problems, from dialogue with the public sphere and the search for financing for projects born within the communities. However, the greatest difficulties lie in generating open and multisectoral meetings to reach agreements and in the broken trust between community members and the authorities. This article addresses the main findings and results of two social innovation projects developed in the Valparaíso region between 2019 and 2021, a scenario marked first by the social outbreak in Chile and then the covid 19 pandemic. Both initiatives had as their main focus the Culture of Innovation Model (mci in Spanish), based on empirical and academic observation of sectoral projects. Its purpose is to promote dynamics that strengthen trust between people and institutions, along with facilitating the formulation of social innovation projects at the level of the inhabitants and communities of a territory.