Understanding people to create value
According to the modern approach, innovation is built on liberal arts education, design thinking, and the ability to create value. This approach emphasises that innovation is not simply about technological invention but about combining human potential, problem-solving methods, and the ability to turn ideas into practical value.
Liberal arts education provides the foundation for independent thinking, critical thinking, interdisciplinary learning, and social responsibility. In the era of innovation, however, this spirit should evolve into emancipatory education, which not only helps people understand the world but also unlocks their capacity for creativity, collaboration, technology, ethics, and transformative action. Such an education goes beyond adaptation, aiming instead to unlock human potential and build a more humane and progressive society.
Design thinking provides a actionable methodology. It is a human-centred approach to problem-solving that does not begin by asking, “What technology do we have?” but rather, “What problems are people facing?”
A typical design thinking process consists of five stages: empathise, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Of these, the first two are decisive in determining the quality of innovation.
During the empathy stage, designers must understand people within their specific living contexts, including their needs, difficulties, motivations, habits, beliefs, cultural norms, and the social barriers influencing their behaviour. This is where the social sciences and humanities demonstrate their value. Disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, cultural studies, law, communications, public policy, and management help us understand people not merely as “users” but as social actors with their own circumstances, relationships, and value systems.
During the problem-definition stage, the social sciences and humanities help distinguish between surface-level symptoms and underlying causes. Many digital transformation programmes, education reforms, urban development projects, and public service innovations face difficulties not because of inadequate technology but because they fail to understand people's real needs, behaviour, beliefs, and social contexts.
For example, the limited use of online public services may not simply result from complicated interfaces but also from a lack of trust, inadequate digital skills, inconvenient procedures, or unclear benefits. Likewise, education reform cannot rely solely on equipment, software, or digital learning materials. It also requires an understanding of learning motivation, teaching methods, teacher-student relationships, family pressures, and regional differences.
At the following stages, the social sciences and humanities continue to broaden the range of possible solutions, assess their suitability, and measure their impact. During the ideation stage, solutions may include not only technological applications but also new education models, new policies, redesigned public services, community initiatives, digital cultural products, or new forms of social organisation.
During the prototyping and testing stages, these disciplines help answer critical questions: Do users understand the solution? Do they trust it? Do they find it appropriate? Are there cultural, psychological, legal, or ethical barriers? Does the solution improve quality of life, strengthen trust, reduce inequality, change behaviour, and enhance community capacity?
In this light, the social sciences and humanities are not confined to evaluating the impact of technology after implementation. They are involved throughout the innovation process, from understanding people and defining problems to designing solutions, testing models, measuring impact, and institutionalising innovation.
In short, the social sciences and humanities help innovation avoid three risks: applying the right technology to the wrong problem; providing the right solution in the wrong context; and pursuing the right objective without securing public acceptance and widespread adoption.
Designing solutions for development challenges
Around the world, the social sciences and humanities are shifting from primarily explaining society to actively creating solutions for development challenges. To participate in and lead innovation, the social sciences and humanities must also modernise their theories and methodologies. Theoretical frameworks that mainly describe, classify, or interpret society need to be complemented by theoretical frameworks capable of designing interventions, forecasting, and assessing impact. Traditional research methods should be combined with big data, behavioural science, policy simulation, participatory research, digital humanities, and computational social science.
Several emerging trends are driving this transformation. Social innovation focuses on developing new solutions to social problems by changing organisational models, governance, education, service delivery, policymaking, and community action. Action research and participatory research involve scientists working directly with communities, localities, and businesses to identify problems, test solutions, and refine them. Behavioural science helps explain how people make decisions and respond to policies.
Policy laboratories facilitate the testing of policies on a small scale before wider implementation. Digital humanities and computational social science expand research capacity through big data, social network analysis, text mining, behavioural simulation, and artificial intelligence. Evidence-based policy helps improve accuracy, transparency, and accountability in development governance.
These trends demonstrate that the social sciences and humanities are not losing their human-centred nature in the digital age. Instead, they are expanding their capabilities and methods to understand people more deeply, design better solutions, and create greater social impact.
As a result, the traditional boundaries between the natural sciences, technology, and the social sciences and humanities are becoming increasingly blurred. Artificial intelligence involves not only algorithms and data but also ethics, law, employment, and trust. The green transition encompasses materials, energy, consumer behaviour, livelihoods, and fairness in development. Smart cities are not simply about digital infrastructure but also urban planning, the culture of using public spaces, community governance, and quality of life.
If differences between these fields still exist, they mainly lie in their approaches, research techniques, and forms of output. Fundamentally, however, they all contribute to the common mission of expanding human capability and creating better models of development.
Implications for Viet Nam
In the context of innovation, digital transformation, and development competition, the social sciences and humanities need to be given a more appropriate position within the national value chain.
First, the social sciences and humanities should be integrated into national innovation programmes from the design stage, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, digital transformation, education, healthcare, urban development, cultural industries, regional development, data governance, and technology ethics. Without a proper understanding of people, culture, behaviour, and institutions from the outset, many innovation programmes may falter despite advanced technology.
Second, social laboratories should be established at universities, research institutes, and in localities. These laboratories would provide spaces to test policies, education models, communication strategies, behavioural interventions, public services, digital culture initiatives, and community governance using real-world problems, real data, and real communities. This approach would enable research in the social sciences and humanities not only to offer recommendations but also to verify, refine, and improve solutions before they are scaled up.
Third, major research programmes on Vietnamese people, the national value system, and a culture of innovation should be commissioned. An innovative nation cannot rely solely on digital infrastructure and new technologies. It also requires innovative people, a scientific culture, public trust, collaborative capacity, technology ethics, and a strong value system to guide development.
Fourth, research outputs, funding mechanisms, and evaluation systems for the social sciences and humanities need to be revamped. Alongside journal articles, monographs, and final reports, greater emphasis should be placed on policy reports, indicator systems, social databases, intervention models, digital cultural products, community initiatives, and practical governance solutions. Evaluation should consider not only academic quality but also practical application and social impact.
Finally, a new generation of social scientists and humanities scholars should be trained. They should possess strong theoretical knowledge, sound methodological skills, data literacy, technological understanding, policy thinking, and the ability to work closely with communities. This new generation can help transform the social sciences and humanities from disciplines that merely explain society into disciplines that co-create it, and from providing criticism to participating from the very beginning of the innovation process.
