Promoting innovation is therefore an urgent need if research in the social sciences and humanities is to become more substantive and address the specific challenges facing society.
Associate Professor Quach Thi Ngoc An of the National University of Art Education said innovation does not simply mean digitising traditional research methods. Rather, it means using technology to expand research’s capacity to generate understanding and solve problems.
This requires a shift from purely descriptive research to research aimed at forecasting, experimenting and developing solutions.
To stay relevant, a research project must address substantive questions: How is society changing? Why are these changes occurring? And to what extent can research findings help policymakers improve social governance?
Today, social science researchers must become co-creators of knowledge, able to contribute to innovation and address emerging challenges.
For example, developing an AI system for healthcare requires sociologists, psychologists and legal experts to work alongside technology companies to determine what data may be used, which groups could be affected and what standards must be observed to avoid ethical breaches.
The knowledge applied throughout this innovation process must be grounded in reliable empirical research that reflects social needs, behaviours and values.
Dr Nguyen Thi Nguyet Anh of the Institute of Party History at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics said innovation is no longer a matter of individual researchers’ efforts but of an entire ecosystem. This ecosystem encompasses universities, research institutes, businesses, regulatory agencies, social organisations and communities.
The social sciences do not stand apart from the technological revolution; they are among the forces shaping it. To help govern the national innovation ecosystem, they must work in controlled experimental environments.
Research centres specialising in the social sciences and humanities could adopt the social laboratory model, allowing researchers to use technology to test policies, educational models, community solutions and communication methods before rolling them out more widely.
The technological era does not diminish the importance of the social sciences and humanities. On the contrary, the more widely technology is used in everyday life, the greater society’s need for knowledge that helps people understand and manage it.
General Secretary and President To Lam has said the social sciences and humanities provide the foundation for leadership and governance capacity, institution building, and cultural and human development.
He said rapid, sustainable development cannot be achieved through technological strength alone if institutions, culture, human development and social governance capacity remain weak. For technology to develop sustainably and serve human life, knowledge from the social sciences must become part of society’s basic infrastructure.
Technology can produce faster, more powerful and smarter tools, but the social sciences and humanities must ensure that people remain at the centre of innovation by addressing a fundamental question: How will people live in a world increasingly shaped by technology?
Innovation in the social sciences and humanities must therefore go beyond modernising research methods. It must create new knowledge and help resolve the practical challenges of a rapidly changing society.
To become central to the national innovation ecosystem, the social sciences and humanities must themselves change, crossing disciplinary boundaries and strengthening experimentation and modelling.
Dr Do Thi Kim Anh of the Academy of Social Sciences and Humanities said this must be a process of fundamental change: from single-discipline research to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches; from small datasets to combining traditional data with big data; from description to explanation, forecasting and experimentation; from isolated research to research conducted in collaboration with communities; and from individual research topics to broader societal challenges.
Such a transformation depends above all on the capacity of researchers.
AI can be a powerful tool, but if researchers hand all their thinking over to machines, research risks becoming a recycling of information rather than the creation of knowledge.
Experts argue that a good social scientist is not necessarily someone who has read the most literature, but someone who can ask questions that machines cannot yet formulate independently and responsibly, evaluate evidence, develop hypotheses and take responsibility for their scientific conclusions.
The ultimate goal of innovation in the social sciences and humanities must be to help build a society with greater capacity for development, improve people’s quality of life and strengthen the nation’s ability to adapt to changing times.
