TEHRAN – The first national conference on social innovation with a focus on social economy is scheduled to be held in the forthcoming spring.

Supported by the Vice-presidency for Science, Technology, and Knowledge-Based Economy, the conference will discuss a series of scientific and applied theories, conceptual frameworks of social innovation, standardization, policymaking, and social investment, IRNA reported.

The role of social innovation in overcoming crisis, boosting community resilience, and designing social participation models are among the other issues to be explored.

The second focus of the conference will be on current environmental, cultural, and social issues of the world, such as challenges facing sustainable development, poverty alleviation, people empowerment, and ways to improve life quality.

A part of the conference will be dedicated to sharing indigenous experiences and models of innovations in social economy, the ones that have led to strengthening human and social capacities in the form of nongovernmental cooperatives, local development funds, and collaborative participation projects.

Social innovations are new social practices that aim to meet social needs in a better way than the existing solutions, resulting from, for example, working conditions, education, community development, or health.

These ideas are created with the goal of extending and strengthening civil society. Social innovation includes the social processes of innovation, such as open source methods and techniques, and also the innovations which have a social purpose—like activism, crowdfunding, time-based currency, telehealth, cohousing, universal basic income, collaborative consumption, social enterprise, participatory budgeting, virtual volunteering, microcredit, or distance learning.

GII: Iran secures position for third successive year

According to the 18th edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII) report, the Islamic Republic of Iran ranked second among the countries of the Central and South Asian region, unchanged over the last three years.

GII 2025 measured innovation performance across 139 economies and unveiled the world’s top 100 innovation clusters. It tracked global innovation trends through investment patterns, technological progress, adoption rates, and socioeconomic impacts.

According to the report, Iran ranked 70th among the 139 economies featured in the GII 2025. In 2024, the country ranked 64th among the 133 economies featured in the GII.

The country ranked 17th among the 36 upper middle-income group economies; in 2024, Iran ranked 5th among the 38 lower-middle-income group economies.

The GII ranks world economies according to their innovation capabilities. Consisting of roughly 80 indicators, grouped into innovation inputs and outputs, the GII aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation.

As stated in the 2025 edition, over the past six years (2020-2025), the statistical confidence interval for the ranking of Iran was between ranks 56 and 75.

Iran performed better in innovation outputs than in innovation inputs in 2025. This year, Iran ranked 109th in innovation inputs, which is lower than last year (85th).

Iran ranked 46th in innovation outputs. This position is higher than last year (48th).

For Iran, 5 indicators improved in the short-term (International patent filings, Connectivity, Robots, Labor productivity, Life expectancy), and 5 indicators worsened (Scientific publications, Research and development (R&D) investments, Venture capital deal Numbers, Fixed broadband, and temperature change).

Iran ranked highest in Creative outputs (45th), Knowledge and technology outputs (46th), and Human capital and research (66th).

The country ranked lowest in Institutions (138th), Business sophistication (107th), and Infrastructure (98th).

Iran performed above the Upper middle-income group average in Human capital and research (Iran’s score was 32.43, while the upper middle-income score is 29.7); Knowledge and Technology outputs Iran’s score was 27.46, whereas the upper middle-income score was 20.0; and Creative outputs (Iran’s score was 31.87, while the upper middle-income score was 22.6).

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