Social Impact Assessment: Measurability and Data Management

The growing interest in the issues of sustainability and social innovation opens new opportunities to explore the great potential of technological innovation in favour of social and environmental impact objectives. However, the scientific community dealing with these issues is facing new challenges to make the achieved results measurable. This research aims to verify the possibility of overcoming the limit of measurability of social impact by integrating social innovation and digital innovation. More specifically, gathering the social impact measurement data and applying business intelligence methods to construct a data warehouse containing a benchmark on the impact chain (Clark at.al 2004). The results show a great potential of information that can be generated by digital technologies to make social innovation processes more measurable, reliable and scalable.