Today's guest on the podcast is Thomas Gegenhuber. The professor for Managing Socio-Technical Transitions at the University of Linz is also a guest lecturer at Leuphana University and conducts research on Open Social Innovation. Together with Johanna Mair (Hertie School), he provided scientific support for the Wir. vs. Virus Hackathon and the follow-up initiative Update-Deutschland - both of which not only generated hundreds of ideas for dealing with the pandemic in Germany, but were also a great experiment for the Open Social Innovation method. Not everything went perfectly, says Thomas Gegenhuber. There is still a lot of catching up to do, especially when it comes to the question of how to continue after a hackathon and how to turn ideas into a sustainable project. Here, it is not only a question of how the innovation process itself is organized, but also of how open and innovative the actors involved are - according to Gegenhuber, there is still room for improvement in the administration as a partner for civil society innovations.

Other hurdles include financing and funding conditions, digital infrastructures or prevailing market dynamics. But of course, there were also positive examples from Wir. vs. Virus, which once again demonstrated the potential of Open Social Innovation.

Look forward to the new episode, which as usual can be listened to on all popular platforms and of course is also here available!