Digital Commons Network^™

Socially Innovative Research Networks: A Roadmap For Sinet, Helen M. Hasan

Helen Hasan

The Social Innovation Network (SInet) was established for cross-disciplinary research on social innovation to 'create better futures for people'. SInet is itself socially innovative since a network is a relatively unfamiliar configuration for a university-wide research unit. A network provides an identity to a research collective that is real, having status and support,but which is fundamentally different to an institute. In a network, connections and flows of knowledge tend to be horizontal not vertical. A network is flexible, reconfigurable, responsive to change and less formal, and has the potential for lower administrative overheads. As knowledge workers, university researchers perform best …