Design as a contribution to social innovation in the mining population: By-products case of Quípama-Muzo emerald zone

Abstract

As an objective, social innovation processes also, create mechanisms to generate development impulses from society itself. The mining sector paradox in the municipalities of Quípama and Muzo in Boyacá (Colombia) underscores the reflection on the ways the community can generate endogenous opportunities through a cooperation and entrepreneurship perspective; also, building these opportunities on the basis of using their own raw materials, so far unused. These two mining populations are historically associated with the wealth of the exploitation of the Colombian emerald. Within this panorama of wealth and appreciation of the emerald, hides a sad reality of deep poverty in the population of the informal mining. Along with this extreme poverty of the mining population, there is a large amount of emerald by-products with a high potential on the development of new products in the mentioned populations.