Universities and social innovation for global sustainable development as seen from the south

Potential contributions of universities to social innovation are explored with special attention to Southern countries. The normative guide is the notion of Sustainable Human Development understood as stressing the agency of least-advantaged sectors. The main challenges stem from decreasing sustainability and increasing inequality. Their impacts are highly dependent on how the tension between economic growth and environmental protection is managed. Improving actual perspectives demands harnessing advanced knowledge to foster inclusive and frugal innovation. For this to occur, universities need to be main actors. The context in which they act is analyzed with reference to the National Systems of Innovation conceptualization. Possible evolutions of universities as agents of social innovation are discussed with the aid of the Multi-Level Perspective. The importance of the Southern experience of innovating in scarcity conditions is highlighted and illustrated with the specific experience of a Latin American university. The cooperation of universities with weak social actors in ways that involve advanced knowledge appears as a key theoretical issue and as a difficult practical problem for the effective engagement of universities in social innovation. The diverse issues that such engagement needs to integrate conform an ambitious research program, of which the paper aims at giving a first glimpse.