Analysis of obstacles to the development of social innovations in Lithuania

Abstract

Social innovations are new ideas, products, services, processes that solve social or environmental challenges and improve the welfare of society. This is a trending research topic that is receiving a lot of political attention, European fund programs and similar funding initiatives. In Lithuania, a very small number of social innovations and stagnant progress can be observed, although great political and financial efforts are being made. A lot of information, research and initiatives are published, in which many influential state institutions are involved, for example, the Ministry of Economy and Innovation, the Lithuanian Innovation Center, and European Union funds are also used. Large investments of money and time are allocated, but social innovations in Lithuania do not strive and do not create suitable conditions for the sustainable development of social innovations. On that basis, the purpose of the study is to identify the strong and weak areas of SI in order to identify possible improvement points. This would help create an appropriate development strategy, creating conditions for the growth and implementation of social innovation in Lithuania. To achieve this goal, we will review the concept of social innovation, and to achieve the goal set in the empirical part, we will use the multi-objective assessment method COPRAS, which will help to assess the level of social innovation. The method of statistical analysis will help to divide the countries selected by the European Union into groups of similar objects, called clusters, and to see alternative distribution according to the importance of factors. The obtained results will help to assess the current situation in Lithuania and to identify challenges and problems.