- 15/03/2016
- Category: Commentaries
The intertwined states of the welfare society, business, and internet are growing. Concerned with these issues, digital social innovators and entrepreneurs are being challenged to find solutions which can lead to positive impacts. According to European Commision, digital social innovation can be defined as a type of collaborative innovation in which innovators, users and communities collaborate using digital technologies to co-create knowledge and solutions for a wide range of social needs and at a scale that was unimaginable before the rise of the Internet.[1] Digital social innovation initiatives all stand on a common ground: that of addressing social needs and issues through internet innovative means. Utilizing digital technologies as the media for implementing social innovation are particularly well suited to help society, because it can mobilize large communities, share resources and spread power.
Digital social innovation, especially for emerging countries such as Indonesia, can offer the tools to address important social issues through creative solutions. Based on the experience around the world, the methods pursued by digital social innovators have different forms, such as making a petition, blowing online fundraising, conducting online learning, and the likes. This is potential for Indonesia. With growing number of young population (17% of Indonesians are between 15 and 24 year old) and increasing rate of Internet penetration and utilization of social media, Indonesia can be a fertile ground for digital social innovation. According to a survey taken by Microsoft on 12,002 internet users from 12 developed and developing countries, including Indonesia, the majority of Internet users feel the positive effects of the Internet on economic and social progress of the community.[2] Many social movements in Indonesia, for example, are growing with the help of social media.
On the other side of the table, the Indonesian government aims to develop more than 200 smart cities, accompanied by infrastructure and human resource development. Surprisingly, the enthusiasm from the youth is incredibly high, particularly in contributing to such aims through digital social innovation. Basically, they come from idea to solve the social problems by utilizing technology. Kitabisa.com, for example, is an online crowd-funding website for various social needs, ranging from NGO funding programs, community initiative programs, student-based ideas, natural disaster relief programs, to the joint venture programs of capital holders. Kitabisa.com has been running more than three years, collecting more than 3 billion rupiah, and producing more than successful 170 social initiatives. However, Kitabisa.com, we can say, is a more established digital social innovation. How about another digital social innovation driven by college students with less or no capital seeds?
Google recently held an event in Indonesia that brought together digital social initiators in Indonesia, Google Hackfair. Most of the participants were undergraduate students. Most of the innovations exhibited came from our daily life problems. For example, Riliv, an application that connects people with stressful psychological problems. It provides one-on-one online counseling with professional psychologists. This initiative departed from the widely misunderstood and underexposed increasing mental disorders and mental health issues in Indonesia. Another innovation was Ban-ku, a mobile application providing location and contact of tire-repair shops and the nearest police station in vehicles-related emergency, particularly tire problems. The idea behind Ban-ku was a simple problem faced by the developer who happened to frequently have emergency situations on his tires while on his way to campus.
Riliv and Ban-ku are just small examples of the ever growing digital social innovations among youth in Indonesia. It is particularly shown that youths in Indonesia have what it takes develop social digital innovations. Digital technology that is fueled with collaborative partnership between government and private sectors can support the efforts on combating social issues with more efficiency.
[1]‘Digital Social Innovation’, European Commision, <http://content.digitalsocial.eu/about/>, accesed March 14 2016.
[2]‘Microsoft: Internet Mampu Dorong Inovasi Bisnis dan Sosial’, Berita satu, February 5 2015 <http://www.beritasatu.com/digital-life/246737-microsoft-internet-mampu-dorong-inovasi-bisnis-dan-sosial.html>, accesed March 14 2016
