Dr. Diego Galego Contributes as Expert to Global Social Innovation Index
Between July 21 and 22, Dr. Diego Galego had the privilege of participating as an invited expert in a workshop convened to refine the Global Social Innovation Index (GSII), an initiative currently being developed under the guidance of a Government Council for Social Innovation. The event was held in Buenos Aires and generously hosted by the Centro de Innovación Social at Universidad de San Andrés, with organizational support from the One Family Foundation.
The workshop brought together academics and practitioners from 10 countries, fostering a genuinely global, interdisciplinary conversation about how social innovation can be measured, compared, and understood across vastly different institutional, cultural, and economic contexts. Over the course of intensive working sessions, participants examined the Index's conceptual framework, indicators, and data architecture, offering critical feedback grounded in both scholarly research and hands-on field experience.
According to Dr. Galego, “the discussions underscored a challenge that sits at the heart of comparative policy work: how do we build measurement tools that are rigorous and internationally comparable, while remaining sensitive to the specific realities of the communities and countries they aim to describe? Social innovation does not look the same in every context, and an index that fails to account for that risks flattening the very diversity it seeks to capture. At the same time, without shared metrics, it becomes difficult to identify patterns, share lessons, or hold institutions accountable for progress.”
Highlights from the workshop resonate closely with Dr. Galego’s research on governance, public policy, and social innovation, and he was grateful for the opportunity to bring that perspective into dialogue with colleagues working in very different national and regional settings. The exchange of ideas, from methodological debates about indicator selection to grounded stories about what social innovation looks like on the ground, was a reminder of how valuable it is to build knowledge collaboratively, across borders and across the divide between theory and practice, he noted.
"I want to thank the organizers at the One Family Foundation and the hosts at Universidad de San Andrés for convening such a thoughtful and well-facilitated gathering, and to the fellow experts for the openness and rigor they brought to the table," said Dr, Galego. "Now, it is time to look forward to seeing how the Global Social Innovation Index continues to take shape, and to staying engaged with this important effort to build better tools for understanding and advancing social innovation worldwide."