Abstract:

In today's competitive environment, innovativeness is considered to be one of the most important means of increasing social welfare while being a competitive advantage for organizations. Additionally, innovativeness helps organizations in differentiating themselves on the market and providing value with advanced products and services as well as solving customer problems. Within this framework, it is necessary to emphasize an individual’s openness to changes and one’s ability to innovate. It is supposed that the individual might provide positive changes to the organization and society, as well as solve problems arising in it by considering innovation from both managerial and social perspectives in case he/she wants to innovate. Social innovation regards to innovative practices and services while meeting social needs and providing solutions to such social issues as women empowerment, training for disabled people, waste management etc. There are many studies in the literature that examined the relationship between individual innovativeness and creative behavior. However, as literature review did not demonstrate any research on the relationship between individual innovativeness and generation of social value, this study aims to contribute to the literature by filling this gap. In this context, the main purpose of this research is to be the leading study in the literature by examining the relationship between individual and social innovativeness along with the causality relationship between these two variables. The survey method has been applied in this research. The results of the field study held on academicians who play an important role in the emergence and dissemination of innovation were evaluated along with the suggestions and limitations of the research. We find a statistically significant relationship between two variables and we conclude that individual innovativeness can be used to explain social innovativeness. 

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