Study on social innovation in Digital Agenda †SMART 2012/0049 This study focuses on mapping
we want this work to grow and develop. Your comments, thoughts and stories are welcome at the
around self management of diseases and public health than around hospitals more innovation around recycling and energy efficiency than around large
margins †to the local managers and workers on the shop floor, as well as to the consumers themselves
rise of innovations like the Expert Patients programmes, or Patient Opinion Public policy has turned also towards the household, through innovations like
involving users at every stage as well as experts, bureaucrats and professionals; designing platforms which make it easy to assemble project
and quickly reflect on what works and what doesn†t 10 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION
challenges. †The OECD€ s LEED Programme (Local Economic and Employment Development which includes a Forum on Social Innovations,
identifying and implementing new labour market integration processes, new competencies, new jobs, and new forms of participation,
work best (such as the discovery that giving computers to two children to share is more effective for education than giving them one each.
label †social marketingâ€) †where policies and programmes that work well for one group may fail for others.
of the research process †from design, recruitment, ethics and data collection to data analysis, writing up, and dissemination.
started as a research and development project and now works with a wide range of service users across the UK
what works, including many counter-intuitive findings. 7 The circuit of information New needs can also be brought to the fore through effective feedback systems
17) Feedback systems from front line staff and users to senior managers and staff. Feedback loops are a necessary precondition for learning
reviewing and improving. This could include front line service research to tap into the expertise of practitioners
and front line staff, using techniques such as in depth interviews and ethnographic/observation methods. User feedback on service quality, including web-based models
degradation and invisibility of garbage workers. 12 She set out to do the 1 PROMPTS, INSPIRATIONS AND DIAGNOSES 23
She decided to shake the hands of every one of the 8, 500 employees of
renowned experts spend between two and six months helping the government to identify problems and explore original solutions on issues
work alongside the policy team to create lateral comments on the issues Making problems visible and tangible
and labourers who discuss and reflect on their farming practices. In the evening, walkers stay in villages and
or why a group of young people don†t find work. These models have to use multiple disciplines
line staff, other sectors, or other countries. In this section, we look at ways of tapping into these sources,
38) Redesigning services with users and producers such as the work undertaken by design consultancies like IDEO, thinkpublic, Participle
and Live/Work or the Hope Institute†s citizen teams formed around public service improvements. One recent example is IDEO€ s work with
the SPARC centre at the Mayo Clinic (see-plan-act-refine-communicate which involved turning an internal medicine wing into a laboratory
section of the clinic where staff and doctors can develop and prototype new processes for improving service delivery.
freeing up financial and staff resources. The idea is to then refocus the prison day and the role of the prison officer around an intensive learning
and the work of consultancy firm What If 42) Forum theatre is a form of theatre developed by Augusto Boal in Brazil
husband mistreating his wife/factory owner exploiting the workers etc Boal called this and other types of participatory theatre, the †Theatre
and labourers. Or, spectators might choose to depict a more local problem like the lack of fresh water,
staff through quality circles. These are usually based on the idea that frontline staff have better knowledge about potential innovations than
collaboration between management and staff †what he called, a system of †profound knowledgeâ€.
44) Quality circles are a group of employees who volunteer to meet up to identify, analyse and solve work-related problems.
front line workers, who are placed often best to identify problems. This approach was pioneered by Toyota and plays an important step in their
One example is the work of †activist architectâ€, Teddy Cruz. Cruz uses †waste†materials from San diego to build homes, health clinics and other
idea that †the expert knows bestâ€. Many of these methods have been greatly helped by the ability of the internet to draw in a far wider range of people and
own staff, and then provides support to the winners 54) Competitions and challenges can be an effective means of uncovering
is the work of Children†s Express in feeding children†s views into the design of ideas for estate regeneration (and into influencing public policy
2002) †Learning Works: The 21st Century Prison. †London: Do Tank Ltd 2. See Boal, A. 1979) †Theatre of the Oppressed. †London:
innovation is that it often works best by moving quickly into practice, rather than spending too long developing detailed plans and strategies.
been used increasingly in fields such as welfare to work. They are often seen as a gold standard for evaluation,
of front line workers, professionals, and citizens. Within universities the usual form is a grant, often with few conditions to allow a group of
Taking innovative front line workers out of service roles and putting them into incubators or prestigious time-limited roles
Allowing staff in an organisation to vote on which ideas and projects should receive early stage funding.
approaches to cutting graduate unemployment or street homelessness encourages bids by teams with the capacity to develop concepts to scale
Business models that work are themselves a prime area for social innovation. They are as diverse as business models in commercial
and of influencing the way the sector works 107) Incomes and outcomes. There are a range of social business models
attention to the many elements that combine to make a business work †any one of which could be the decisive weakest link
involves those with some measure of private interests †finance, staff suppliers, and purchasers. Some may exercise their interests at arm†s length
as consumers, or workers or participants, but their culture is social, are committed to the communities in which they operate, providing work, services, and
support. Examples include Japanese food consumer co-ops, and the Mondragon family of co-ops in Spain
which specialises in work-based mentoring projects. Based on the idea that †everyone remembers their
apprenticeship. As of late December 2009 there were 3, 261 companies registered as CICS Governance Ownership structures bring with them important dynamics that may help or
and the staff who carry them out. Yet the success of a social venture depends on an integration of the two.
more directly in the work of a venture, both directly, and through representation on the board.
127) User orientation and autonomous work groups. Large commercial organisations have moved away from hierarchical organisations to
models where there are relatively autonomous groups of front line staff supported by the technical staff, and management.
Control is exercised by the users/consumers and their requirements, translated through information and operational systems that highlight the degree to which
discipline to front line staff formerly supplied by hierarchical managers The manager†s task in this case is to assess variances in performance and
structures but in its operations †how it works with others, uses technologies or works in partnership
131) Socially-oriented supply chains. Transparent supply chains that reflect the values of the venture are often a key element in sustaining
poor labour records. It often takes time to build up robust supply chains of this sort,
between a venture and its staff and volunteers. Conventional accounting takes little account of this intangible capital,
its own staff, board and volunteers. With many of them there will be formal agreements, but whereas in the private market economy relationships take
on the basis of its ideas and the way it works to realise them. This creates
Investing in human resources to ensure a social venture†s openness is as important as investing in a building or machine
Visits from external experts can be an aid to training and formation or, as in the case of SEKEM, they can keep
of their work, the stories of those involved in it, and the range of people
A workplace should provide a clear and engaging insight into the work that goes on and culture that rests within the
organization. Some ventures go further and make their workplace into a working gallery or museum.
They demonstrate much of their work visually, through photos and graphs. Some arrange tours and generate
income from them. For example, Vauban in Freiburg, Germany, and Bo01 in Malmo, Sweden, are examples of low-carbon communities which
as well as see the work of the employees and staff. It is always a useful exercise for a venture
4 76 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION to consider how it could best present its work and its social purpose
tangibly as if it were a gallery 140) Open events to provide an opportunity for organisations to engage
a wide variety of people in the work of the organization. They are an occasion for experiencing the venture†s culture.
Developing its staff is important, not only for the venture itself, but to create a group of
then the experience of the work and of contributing to a social goal has to be powerful enough to persuade them to continue.
one of its goals the attraction and effective employment of a wide range of volunteers.
proof that a particular model works) and effective demand (mobilising sources of finance to pay for the idea or service
is to find out what works and scale it upâ€. There are many methods for growing social innovations †from organisational growth and franchising to
works. Effective demand refers to the willingness to pay. Both are needed †but sometimes the priority is to prove effectiveness while in other cases the
The promotion of social innovation has tended to focus on the supply side and how innovations can be diffused among service providers through experts
intermediaries, and collaboration. However, we argue that the design of services should start from the user,
160) Promotion and marketing of innovative services and programmes to encourage behavioural change. This includes market
the †5 a day†campaign, the promotion of free smoking cessation services and the new NHS campaign †Change4life†which promotes healthy
in terms of staff and equipment. The parent company supports the new company until it is financially sustainable †only then can the old and
in the professional development of staff. There is a central role for academies, apprenticeships, and training programmes.
One example 5 SCALING AND DIFFUSION 93 Organic farming students at Everdale. Everdale is an organic farm and
example is the work of ASA (the Association for Social Advancement or Asa meaning hope in Bengali) to develop an alternative to Grameen
It works with councils in developing good practice through a network of online communities, web related resources and
199) Barefoot consultants. There is an important role for consultants and those with specialist knowledge †who can act as knowledge brokers and
advisers in the new systems. It is best if they seek to diffuse information acting as educators, rather than protecting their knowledge through
intellectual property and charging for access 5 98 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION Organisation and scale
But it can only work if operations can be codified under enforceable rules. Without codification, it is difficult to ensure quality and continuity
fair trade company that works with artisan cooperatives and NGOS in Bangladesh. Image courtesy of Sheenagh Day
technical support, policy work, media and PR, and internal/external evaluations. While the franchisees are responsible for fundraising, they
Metrics to show what works and what deserves to be grown There are many metrics for judging
a great deal of work has gone into the design of measures of social value A recent survey found 150 different metrics in use in the nonprofit sector
with an annual turnover of £98 billion and employing some 1. 5 million staff It is involved already heavily in innovation through investment in research
Our Work •Portfolio M&e The Work of Others •Global Health Agenda •Girls Database/Scorecards
•Girls Count Task force Reports •Partners & research initiatives measure girls more broadly Demand Driven System Change
Foundation†s work to develop the ability of adolescent girls in developing countries to deliver social and economic change to their families and
of when you should work, learn and retire. This idea leads to a range of innovations in everything from employment law and pensions to
volunteering and urban design. 1 241) Radical democratisation, taking the principles of popular sovereignty into new spaces, from the mass media to local government and the
workplace. This involves a wide range of issues from the use of the web to the nature of technology and the design of distributed systems which
The Expert Patients Programme (NHS/EPP) is an example of this trend, where citizens with particular medical conditions provide
authorities, experts, and local citizens. Together they formulated and implemented a series of community-based interventions intended to
Examples include bans on smoking in workplaces in part of Europe, and on advertising billboards in SãO Paolo, Brazil
So while familiar data on income, employment, diseases or educational achievement continues to be gathered, there is growing interest in other types
changes, including paying attention to non-paid work, rethinking the contribution of finance to prosperity, and properly accounting for
new system of apprenticeships in green industries, or to green existing industries Systemic finance We describe many different finance tools in other sections which can
academic journals †which sit alongside consultants adept at looking at companies†IP, or their R&d pipelines, spotting patterns and possibilities
These individuals can work within, or across, organisations They can be involved in adopting or adapting existing innovations.
277) Innovation champions are individual consultants who produce ideas network to find what else is being tried,
Some work within organisations either within or across departments, some are set up to encourage collaboration across organisations,
and the Ministry of Employment, to bring together government, private enterprises, and the research community under one roof to promote
They are shared much more than work spaces. They are places where social entrepreneurs, community activists, nonprofits, and
284) Innovation hubs are shared work spaces which are specifically designed to promote collaboration and innovation †such as CAN
theory underpins much of its work. This theory is based on a pyramid with three levels:
Consultant for companies that develop eco products and designer of a line of eco-clothing.
being developed by their own staff. They are now developing their model, in partnership with the Australian Social Innovation Exchange
a year, employing 90 staff plus another 60 in the summer months. It runs residential and day courses and is generally an animator of new
and action research collaboratives such as the Young Foundation†s work with local authorities on neighbourhoods and wellbeing
who come together on a regular basis to reflect on their work, support each other, and learn from formal evidence as an aid to both innovation
experts in their respective fields 138 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION Innovation platforms There are different types and forms of platforms,
and NGOS, exemplified in the work of Philips in developing new models of The State The Market
and engaging individuals as workers. In some cases, firms have used the particular relations that characterise households as a channel for selling.
and compulsory targets for the employment of people with disabilities This is also the case with household-generated innovation.
the form of recognition, promotion or finance 317) Appropriate risk management. Public agencies tend to be fearful
319) Circuits of information from users to front line staff and senior managers. The flow of information from the periphery to the centre is
by professional organisations providing methods for engaging citizens Users play an important role in providing new insights into user needs
seven people, including civil servants from the Regions, politicians, experts and citizens. Participants raise their own questions,
But there are also many tools for encouraging staff to innovate from managers to front line workers
323) †Top slicing†departmental budgets for innovation, for example, 1 per cent of turnover as a rough benchmark (similar to the proportion of GDP
325) Crosscutting budgets that support broad programmes which leave space for experiment and innovation, such as those For sure Start
outcomes, such as lower unemployment 327) Holistic local budgets such as the New deal for Communities, which gave local communities wide discretion on how to spend large sums of
ensuring the work continues even after government funding stops in 2010. Image courtesy of Andrew
and like many bonus systems can lead to major problems of fairness who was really responsible for the innovation?
374) Bonus payments on spending aligned to social outcomes such as the UK Government†s Performance Reward Grant for local area partnerships
In the 1990s, Employment Zones allowed contractors to innovate new methods for getting unemployed people into work, with payment linked
to outcomes rather than inputs and outputs 379) Differential tax credits, allowances and estate duties for
economy such as compulsory targets, including the employment of people with disabilities, regulations for renewable energy, fiscal
Toyota†s methods of work organisation that has spread to manufacturing and service industries over the past 25 years.
as closer engagement with trade unions in the improvement of service quality 391) Public sector unions, as sources of innovation and promoters of
manual workers have resisted innovations (particularly ones involving changes to demarcations. However, in other cases, unions have helped
helps firemen find part-time employment as benefits advisors alongside their roles as firemen, or the local branch of Unison in Newcastle upon
politicians, management and trade unions in a quality programme for upgrading public services 392) Supporting front line workers as innovators such as the joint IDEO
/Kaiser permanente (KP) project in the US. Shift changes were identified as one of the biggest challenges to continuity of patient care.
393) Tithes of working time to generate collaborative public innovation †an extension of the Google model where engineers are encouraged to spend
sector workers to volunteer for socially innovative projects 394) Secondments of public sector employees into †skunk worksâ€, innovation
teams, and projects to develop service innovation 395) Greater freedoms in designated or priority areas as a spur for
397) Secure employment innovation models which separate project failure from redundancy. Examples include funding a range of parallel
projects to test out innovations with job security, so that individuals can be transferred from failures to successes
398) Accreditation, search and recruitment of public innovators by commercial headhunters or government agencies. For example, with
accredited lists of individuals with proven track records who can be quickly employed onto projects.
The Neighbourhood Renewal advisers in the UK are one example 1 166 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION
collaboration between public service workers and civil society, and make the boundaries between them more fluid
401) Secondments of public sector employees to community organisations and private enterprises, and vice versa 402) Collaborative structures for more innovative service design
decision-making more expert and more democratic. †Democracy Journal. †No. 7, Winter 2008 1
and enterprises works best, or how to stage funding to maximum effect We anticipate rapid evolution in this space as philanthropists develop more
416) Intermediaries for contributions in kind provide labour and skills matching for volunteering, such as the Taproot Foundation†s Service
bono marketing, human resources and IT consulting services 417) Philanthropic †ebaysâ€. Philanthropic platforms such as Volunteermatch which help people find volunteering opportunities in
employment for the rural poor 420) Venture philanthropy focused on innovation in particular sectors, such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation†s (RWJF€ s) Pioneer Portfolio
The students work Processing bamboo as part of Prosperity Initiative†s plan to transform the bamboo sector in Northwest Vietnam.
networks, while exposing members of staff to new working cultures and experiences Legislation and Regulation
It works at the local, national and regional level, with organisations including non-governmental organisations, trade unions, faith-based
networks, professional associations, nonprofit capacity development organisations, philanthropic foundations and other funding bodies businesses, and social responsibility programmes
439) National networks such as NCVO or SCVO in the UK, many of which run programmes to encourage their members to innovate
in social issues as a source of new ideas, reputation, and recruitment. Many businesses now see social innovation as a field for creating new business
people who want to believe that their employer has a social conscience and to stimulate cultures of innovation in the mainstream business through
from community/voluntary associations to †work insertion†organisations and companies limited by guarantee Social enterprises can generate income in a myriad ways.
members, such as the service consortia in the, Third Italy, or Work Ventures in Australia 444) Consumer co-ops such as the Japanese food co-ops which have
are responsible for exploitative labour practices, cause harm to people and planet or are at odds with the values and mission of the investing
worker cooperatives and employs over 100,000 people. The network†s bank, the Caja Laboral, provides credit to the co-ops that it helps to set
to labour market development. However, developing skills within the field of social enterprise is critical to the growth and development of the sector
employers, business schools, think tanks, sector leaders and others 486) Lessons in social entrepreneurship such as the programmes
to employer needs. This was proposed originally in the mid-1990s as a Guaranteed Electronic Market (GEM), a web-based market for people to
†bads†(such as criminality or unemployment), to accelerate market innovation to meet social and environmental goals
market, and to their terms of funding and employment? Who will provide the necessary tools and platforms?
Paid work Unpaid work Leisure Housework, paid work and leisure Minutes per day and person, latest year available
Note: Using normalised series for personal care; United states 2005, Finland 1998, France 1999, Germany 2002, Italy 2003, United kingdom 2001
of working time, the valorisation of voluntary labour, the content and channels of life skills learning, the role of many of the social and educational services
the arrangements for retirement and unemployment, the size and location of public service centres such as schools and hospitals,
by enabling them to retain some rights over their works. Examples include: Creative Commons, Free Documentation, and Open Publication
publish works online for free Valorising the voluntary Another set of methods have tried to give formal value to time in the
voluntary work and support through, for example, public tax credits community commissioning and grant supported projects 504) Policies that create productive time in the household such as social
505) Flexible terms of formal employment to enable a sustainable informal economy, such as the right to request flexible working time
4 SUPPORT IN THE INFORMAL OR HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY 201 506) Training for volunteers †the provision of training and incentives for
that represent a specified quantity of labour time. With Ithaca Hours a unit is valued at $10,
and while most work is valued as one unit, certain professionals like dentists are allowed to value their hour more highly
works for an hour helping an old person with shopping or housework If they work outside the hours of 9am to 5pm they get one and a half
If they undertake body care work they get two hours. The time dollars they receive can
517) Users as producers †such as the Expert Patients Programme, which teaches users to manage their own health conditions more effectively
teachers to work in schools 518) Producer-consumer collaboration, such as Community Shared Agriculture, in which consumers advance finance to farmers to fund
Live Work 31 London Climate Change Agency 158 Mapping 17-19 Margolis Wheel 47-48
Trade unions 164,178 Transition Towns 109,120, 191,207, 219 Transmitters 95,107 Tribunis Plebis 43,152 Triggers and Inspirations 15
Workplace as Museum 75 Work Ventures 183 Working Rite 66-67,220 World bank 19,38, 89 Worldchanging 178
WRAP 135 X-Prize 39 Young Foundation, The 2, 17,126, 133 137,147, 160,176-177,220, 221
His recent work has focused on new waste and energy systems and on projects in the social
We now have over 60 staff, working on over 40 ventures at any one time, with staff in New york and Paris as well as
London and Birmingham in the UK This book is about the many ways in which people are creating new and
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial-Sharealike 4. 0 International License Awareness
The objective of work package 3 is to identify, compare and evaluate the most salient innovation strategies in the field of digital social innovation.
We have been experimenting participatory methodology to engage practicioners, experts and policy makers in the generation of DSI policy policy ideas, issuse and future scenarios.
brought together over 70 DSI practitioners, experts, and policy makers from different European countries. As main outcome of the workshop, ï¿
final DSI event with more than 400 DSI policy makers, experts and practitioners in Brussels, December 16 2014.
building on the work presented in this report. Finally, we will continue our work on engaging
The objective of work package 3 is to identify, compare and evaluate the most salient innovation strategies in the field of digital social innovation
presentations and panel discussion from European DSI experts. The primary focus of the session was to engage the DSI community in kicking off the DSI research
day workshop at the European commission which brought together 75+DSI policy makers, experts and practitioners from across Europe to discuss
summit brought together 198 experts (157 domestic and 41 international) in order to generate policy proposals to boost the productive exchange matrix in Ecuador.
One stream within this research (Work Package 8) focusses on online networks and ICT enabled social innovation
experts in Northern ireland can capitalise on the potential for digital technology for social good Fed in to case study selection
Studies and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES. Â Future engagement work planned
scale their work and how they can do this •$spxetpvsdjohï¿8ffl ï¿$pqfoibhfo ï¿%
unemployment, resource constraints and so forth. GDP slow down since mid-2011, environmental disasters climate change, an ageing population,
and growing unemployment will require innovative solutions that challenge traditional ways of doing things, such as moving from closed innovation models to open and
the European Information Society for Growth and Employment, and the Digital Agenda (a Europe 2020
emerge to tackle societal challenges, such as unemployment, clean and renewable energy provision, poverty to improve public services such as education and health,
Employees Professional employees inside the company Working with professional within inside and outside the company
boundaries and designated experts technocrats Knowledge and information from inside and outside the organizational boundaries of governments
which fixations (works entitled to copyright protection) are made openly available. Participants in the culture can modify those products and redistribute
Regarding governance, the open source community works under the principles of peer governance, a bottom -up mode of participatory decision-making.
developers tend to work in isolation Despite gathering around certain events and activities or participating in social networks,
are the result of individuals†bright ideas and, only to a small extent, of cooperative work
the implementation of the work programme, in line with the budget. ENOLL has five operational work groups
under the Council as well as several thematic subgroups. It offers different types of services to its members
certification, communication and promotion, project development, and 32 learning and education activities are only a few examples.
For crowdsourcing to work, one needs the â€oeright†crowd. For example, if technical or scientific knowledge is required,
power in profit sharing, and the value of reusing. They also refer to the importance of all actions that lead to
useful and that can improve their work. We have referred already to some of them in section 5. 4 as enablers
assistance (such as marketing, legal, finance, human resources, and other business development services). By locating similar or complementary entities in proximity to each other,
which aims at indirect revenues via cross-app promotion, brand promotion and e-commerce However, while some developers are making it big,
the majority are not seeing the returns they were expecting to, to a lower extent, intrinsic motivations also matter.
ERDF funds have also incentivized the work of other living labs, such as PACALABS101 and Oululabs102
becoming more popular to source experts and expertise in different areas There are many examples of interesting online platforms.
and the quality of work performed. The authors suggest that financial incentives may be used to control trade-off between accuracy, speed and total effort
This Amazon†s micro-labour site offers members a chance to perform Human Intelligence Tasks (HIT
meaningful and creative work within the crowd), publicity and the sense of community in general (that is
transparency in urban works, and 6) indicators related to the new Spanish Law of Transparency. The indicators
the way representative democracy works nowadays Davies (2013) and Janssen et al (2012) also refer to reputation and visibility as motivations for governments
ideas for beyond the Digital Agenda and Europe 2020, looking at three main pillars of the frame work:
The workshop brought together over 70 DSI practitioners, researchers, experts, and policy makers from different European countries,
them to scale up their work What the biggest barriers were that they faced and how to ad
-portant that you leave at least hal -fof the time for participants to ask questions from the presenters
what works (and what doesn†t Finally, it†s important to acknowl -edge that policy may not be able
We recommend that the work -shop facilitator does this over a lunch Break with a diverse group
back to the reconvened work -shop 54 Prime some attendees to give a response to the ideas presented
To summarise the preliminary themes that have emerged from the community of experts and practitioners of
of creators (to control their work and to be able to make a living of their creativity) and the interests of
studies and evaluations, there is not much evidence on what really works and what does not.
and to improve investment in those that really work. This is, therefore, also a recommendation related to policy making to support digital social innovation
cannot yet engage in this work, due to the small and mostly disconnected data-set we currently have gathered
We would argue that future work after the end of the DSI project should allow the website
that lots of work must be done to connect the many disconnected local digital social innovation organisations
One example of this is Nesta†s work with the UK Cabinet office on The Centre for Social action Innovation
they will need to demonstrate how they can evidence their work and progress from level one and
Digital Social Innovation within the community and to begin to understand the community and how it works
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