About APSIRI

The Asia-Pacific region faces shared challenges — inequality, demographic change, environmental pressure, and rapid technological transformation — that no single discipline or sector can address alone.

APSIRI treats social innovation as a systemic capacity: the ability of institutions, communities, and markets to generate, test, and scale solutions to these shared challenges. We believe innovation is meaningful only when it makes societies more just, inclusive, and sustainable.

The Asia-Pacific is diverse in development context yet bound together by interdependence and shared futures. It is a region where social innovation is urgently needed and where new models are actively emerging.

By focusing here, APSIRI aims to build knowledge that is regionally grounded and globally relevant, and to connect researchers, policymakers, and practitioners across borders.

APSIRI works through three interconnected centres. The Social Innovation Research Centre anchors the Institute’s scholarship, leading policy research and regional knowledge-sharing. The International Cooperation and Communication Centre builds partnerships and convenes regional dialogue. The Innovation Design and Experiment Centre advances prototyping, pilots, and policy-lab work.

Together these centres form a Research–Policy–Action mechanism: research informs policy, policy guides action, and field experience feeds back into research.

APSIRI concentrates its research and practice on four pillars: social innovation and inclusive growth; green economy and sustainable industry; digital governance and public innovation; and youth leadership and future education.

These priorities align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals — in particular Goals 8, 9, 10, 13, and 17.

APSIRI is committed to open knowledge and to collaboration as a core working method. The Institute seeks to establish research relationships with universities, research institutes, civil-society organisations, and international bodies, participating in every collaboration as an independent institution.

Our long-term direction is to become a credible regional platform connecting research with policy, innovation with society, and the Asia-Pacific with the world.