ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the concept of innovation by concentrating on the question of how rural development issues in Finland can assume the form of problems that are relevant to rural inhabitants themselves. Local activity, personal commitments and investments in social capital are of great importance in the context of rural policy. The chapter demonstrates the importance of such an evaluation for practical rural policy, and examines in particular new forms of co-operation, set up at different spatial levels within rural policy, referred to recently as 'new partnerships'. The Finnish rural policy shows in practice that the statements of the Budapest Declaration point in the right direction. The principal observation of innovation formation was that leaderii was very successful in activating local participants by comparison with other forms of development. In Finland, as in many other countries, functions within society are organized primarily on the basis of specialized institutions, and even the public sector is professionally highly sectorized.
