NASSCOM Foundation is pioneering the Social Innovation Honours award to recognize excellence and encourage innovation in social development initiatives. The annual Honours aim to showcase projects that demonstrate best practices through exemplary use of ICT in areas of social transformation. This honour is a celebration of innovations that bring about social change and development through the application of cutting-edge technology.

Despite the giant leaps that mankind has made in the last century, human society continues to face unprecedented social, economic, environmental, and cultural challenges. Social innovation has the ability to be the vehicle of transformation in the face of such challenges. The Stanford Social Innovation Review defines social innovation as "A novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals." In creating the platform for Social Innovation Honours, NF aims to identify projects where innovation could be in the form of both a process and a result. In looking at the process, NF aims to understand systems based on transfer and sharing of knowledge across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. For NF, a social innovation can be not only a product, a process, or a technology, but also “a principle, an idea, a piece of legislation, a social movement, an intervention, or some combination of them.”

Terms such as social enterprise and social innovation were coined in the non-profit sector and hence continue to be associated only with this sector. However, there are many path-breaking projects that have been initiated by the government as well as corporates which deserve to be recognized and feted.

NF endeavors to create and curate spaces that foster these social innovations. We hope this honour inspires creativity and imagination to bring positive social transformations for ICT development.

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