Developing scale and fuzzy multi criteria decision making model proposal to determine social innovation potential

Social innovation focuses on reacting to social demands and to develop innovative solutions to overcome various social issues in order to generate social benefit by strategically combining ideas, resources and capabilities. To get over the difficulties in evaluating social innovation, this study is focused on developing a scale and a model for determining social innovation potential. In the study which is executed in three stages, at first stage, criteria are determined by literature review and evaluated with contribution of experts through a three-round Delphi analysis. Secondly, in weightening stage, relations among criteria are determined analyzing interaction survey answers of experts using fuzzy DEMATEL. Pairwise comparisons are made by experts for relations which are above the defined relation value, in order to determine the weights for criterion using fuzzy Analytic Network Process (ANP). Finally, in ordering stage, an application of the proposed Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model for determining social innovation potential of the projects is performed on a sample of projects. Final order is determined via using Borda Count Method which considers project orders determined by fuzzy VIKOR and fuzzy TOPSIS analysis. According to results of this study, most important criteria for determining social innovation potential of the projects are accessing required finance, possibilities of the actual technologies and availability of social entrepreneurs and required human resources to perform activities. This study as a result proposes a scale and a complete solution approach for determining social innovation potential of the projects. Keywords: Fuzzy Analytic Network Process, Fuzzy DEMATEL, Fuzzy TOPSIS,Fuzzy VIKOR, Social Innovation