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In this lecture, given to design students at Malmö University, Meroni outlines the basic concepts of service design and discusses the insights she have made while working with diverse stakeholders in multiple design projects.

Read more about Anna Meroni.

Related articles
- Report from a workshop on service design for social innovation
- Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation (2011)

Linking social innovation & design and a critical approach
The Knowledge Connect reviewer thinks the Co-Design article Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation is interesting for two reasons:

First, it opens up the links between social innovation and design approaches (such as participatory design) that have been evolving in Northern Europe since at least the 1970s. The contribution (actual and potential) of these approaches is not always adequately acknowledged in literature which frames the link between design and social innovation as having a much more recent history or that links the evolution of social design to North American traditions of ‘user-centred design’ (stemming more from technology and product design disciplines).

Second, this article is interesting in terms of the way the authors have engaged with the critiques focused on the use of design in social innovation. They have certainly demonstrated that these critiques are being taken seriously, and could indeed lead to some even more exciting conversations in the future! It does, however, leave the reader with some real and practical questions, questions which plague the social innovation field more generally, such as who may pay for the long-term involvement of designers in social sector organisations, and how design could be built into interdisciplinary teams around the social sector more effectively so that designers do not have to reinvent the wheel in addressing complex social issues.

Read the full review here.

Medea on the map of design and social innovation
In the article written by Knowledge Connect’s editor (Autumn [sic!] 2012: Design and Social Innovation), the research environment on design and social innovation at Medea is placed alongside esteemed actors like La 27e Région, IDEO and the Design Council in the UK.

Related articles
- Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation (2011)
- Dealing with Dilemmas: Participatory Approaches in Design for Social Innovation (2011)
- Participatory Design and ‘Democratizing Innovation’ (2010)

Image credit: Flickr user pfv. CC:BY-NC

Seravalli, A. (forthcoming). Building Fabriken, Design for Socially Shaped Innovation. To be presented at Design Research Society International Conference Bangkok, 1-4, July 2012.

Abstract
Recently, there has been a growing attention to innovation processes based on the involvement of diverse actors in co-creation activities. A new innovation model is evolving, relying on collaboration, openness and participation as drivers for the development of novelty in diverse fields. This model has a central role in social innovation, which is claimed to arise from collaborations across various sectors and social structures. In trying to understand how innovation arises in co-creation processes, this paper relies on the idea of socially shaped innovation, according to which novelty emerges from local interactions through tensions and argumentation.

In exploring how design could support socially shaped innovation, the paper discusses the experience of designing Fabriken, a socially shaped infrastructure for socially shaped innovation. Particularly, the focus is on the design process and on the shift from a design-in the-studio strategy, based on a funnel model, to a design-in-use strategy, where some participatory tactics such as prototyping, small-scale interventions and long-term engagement are used by diverse stakeholders to explore the design space.

Keywords: Socially shaped innovation; collaborative, open and democratic innovation; Design-in-use; Prototyping; Small-scale interventions; Long-term engagement

Article excerpt: Fabriken, a socially shaped infrastructure for socially shaped innovation?

Eight months after the opening, some considerations can be made about social shaping at Fabriken.

Collaborative networks are emerging, involving not only Fabriken, but also the whole premises. While people are sewing, soldering and laser-cutting in the basement, STPLN is hosting events and managing a co-working facility at the ground level, using the same collaborative, open and democratic approach that drives Fabriken. Users are moving from one space to the other, developing alliances and taking advantage of all the possibilities.

One of these users is Carin, a former teacher, who contacted Fabriken to get support for starting her project. Her idea is to create a space where children can develop their creativity and environmental awareness by playing with cast-off materials from manufacturing processes. Fabriken is supporting Carin’s project in different ways: On the one side, it provides her access to a workshop where she can experiment with materials and do activities with children. On the other side, it allows her, by being in the space, to become part of Fabriken’s network and to get to know possible partners.

In terms of the broader innovation discourse, Fabriken also works as a space for technological experimentations. Forskningavdelningen’s members have been involved in the creation of several different prototypes of robots, software applications and hardware boards; some of these experiments have been commercialized. A number of users use the facilities as a support for their start-ups: Quinn has started a catering company using the premises’ kitchen. Rebecka, a fashion designer, has also recently founded her own company and is using Tantverket as her atelier.

Beside users coming to the space for setting up a small company or exploring the possibilities of technologies and machines, there are also participants who have been unemployed or on sick leave for a long time. In this sense, Fabriken counts in the social innovation discourse, but in a way that we never expected.

From these outcomes, it seems that the Fabriken experience can bring a contribution to the general discourse of collaborative, open and democratic innovation. In fact, the phenomena appearing in the space seem to indicate that novelty emerging from social shaping is manifold since it simultaneously involves diverse dimensions, from technological to social ones, from economical to organizational ones.

Download this article (pdf)

Building Fabriken, Design for Socially Shaped Innovation by Anna Seravalli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Filmmaker Erik Roscam Abbing writes “In the spring of 2011, the idea for the movie was born. Through my teaching, writing and consultancy practices, I got more and more interested in how new design approaches are helping large organizations deal with complex issues. I saw product-driven companies work to make the transition to a more service-dominant logic. I saw technology-centered companies aspiring to become more human-centered, with technology as enabler. And I saw large companies struggle with the agility and entrepreneurial spirit that is required for relevant innovation.”

View the documentary embedded below or follow this direct link.

Related articles
- Design for Social Innovation: a concept closely related to the converging design and business fields.
- We are idea rich, selection baffled and adoption poor: how researchers and designers need to combine their invention strengths with the execution strengths of entrepreneurs and business actors in long-term, strategical relationships.

Image credit: Flickr user AaronPatterson CC:BY

Hat tip to Anders Emilson for spotting this documentary.

Hillgren, Per-Anders; Seravalli, Anna & Emilson, Anders. (2011). Prototyping and Infrastructuring in design for social innovation. Co-Design Vol. 7, Nos. 3–4, September–December 2011, 169–183.

Abstract
During the past five years design has been recognised as a powerful innovation driver. Design methods and tools have also been applied in new fields. One of them is social innovation, which is aimed at developing new ideas and solutions in response to social needs. While different initiatives have demonstrated how design can be a powerful approach in social innovation, especially when it comes to systemic thinking, prototyping and visualising, some concerns have been raised regarding the limitations of applying design in this field. Through a specific case, this paper will discuss and suggest some approaches and concepts related to design for social innovation. Coming from a participatory design tradition, we focus on the idea of infrastructuring as a way to approach social innovation that differs from project-based design. The activities that are carried out are aimed at building long-term relationships with stakeholders in order to create networks from which design opportunities can emerge. We also discuss the role of prototyping as a way to explore opportunities but we also highlight dilemmas.

This is a pre-print version, published with the authors’ consent in the interest of open dissemination, but somewhat different from the final, archival version of the article. Do not cite this version without permission from the authors; the archival version is published as: Hillgren, Per-Anders; Seravalli, Anna & Emilson, Anders. (2011) Prototyping and Infrastructuring in design for social innovation. Co-Design Vol. 7, Nos. 3–4, September–December 2011, 169–183.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2011.630474

Image credit: jvoves CC:BY-NC-SA

The ePub version of this article was made with open-source software Calibre.

Seravalli, Anna. (2011). “Democratizing production: challenges in co-designing enabling platforms for social innovation”, The Tao of Sustainability, International Conference on Sustainable Design Strategies in a Globalization Context, Bejing China 27-29 October 2011.

Abstract
In the social innovation field it has been recognized the need for infrastructures to support the flourishing of social innovation: intermediaries that should facilitate the connections between diverse stakeholders and resources. Design research has contributed to the idea of intermediaries by developing the concept of enabling platforms. These are situated systems of human and non-human actors, which should support bottom-up initiatives and cross-sector networks by responding to the meta-technological demands of social innovation activities. In order to fulfil this scope they should be deeply rooted in the specific context where they are operating, valuing local stakeholders and resources. Furthermore they should be characterized by a certain degree of indeterminacy, which leaves to the involved stakeholders the possibility to initiate their own activities by performing design actions after the design of the platform is concluded, the so called design-after-design.

This article would like to discuss the nature of enabling platforms and how they could be designed referring to a concrete case: the establishment of the fabrication space Fabriken in Malmö, Sweden. First some reflections will be made about why fabrication spaces can be considered enabling platforms and which specific challenges they pose in supporting social innovation. Further on, the strategy of design-in-use will be presented highlighting the role that prototyping, individual involvement and long-term perspective can play in designing enabling platforms.

Keywords: enabling platforms, design for social innovation, personal fabrication, design-before-use, design-in-use, prototyping

Download “Democratizing production: challenges in co-designing enabling platforms for social innovation” as ePub file or PDF file.

Image credit: MEDEA Malmö CC:BY

X has created a way for activists to spread short bits of information by using tools such as Mp3 players, FM transmitters and standard radios in contexts such as traffic-jams. His system is not a substitute for online communication but rather a way to spread a message when the Internet is shut down by the governments in rogue countries.

X, why are you doing this?

This project is something really personal for me because it’s part of my identity and it’s something I want to do for my country. By the time I started this project, the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and the other middle-eastern countries emphasized more the need that I had found after the presidential election in Iran in June 2009: having means of communication that do not completely rely on the Internet as a platform of communication. When the government shuts down the Internet – or block peoples’ access to it – people must still have a chance to manage their communication and get their messages across. This is the intention I had when I started working on it and the final result is what I call “Amphibious Media” which is a combination of online and offline platforms of communication that is capable of spreading information through the whole society.

Could you describe how Amphibious Media works in more detail?

Amphibious Media is the combination of two networks of people: one network inside the country and one network outside the country. I have defined three typical roles in these networks. The first role is the Data DJ. The task of the Data DJ is to collect news via different sources such as the Internet or data provided by citizen journalists. The Data DJs then select the most relevant pieces of news according to the current condition in the country and transform them into small bits of information, something that I call “news strings”. I defined the second role as the Ants. Ants are the people who collect the news strings from the Data DJs and prepare them for distribution and convert them into suitable formats. The third role belongs to the group of activists that I call the Bees and their task is to spread the news around the city.

So how does the distribution of information work?

When the Internet is shut down, people still have other means of communication: mobile phones, offline social networks and satellite TV channels. Imagine that I heard something on satellite TV. I then record it to my Mp3 player and make a very short message of it which I call a “Tweet Talk”. I then connect the Mp3 player to an FM transmitter and start to broadcast the content of Mp3 player within a 10 metre range in a public place. If I’m in a car, then I can connect the Mp3 player to the car audio system and use the antenna to turn the car into a mobile radio station. As I drive through the city, and I stop for a traffic jam, the people around me can get the message through their radio receivers. It’s like a radio network of people.

How easy would it be for the government to find out where the signals are coming from?

Triangulating these very short-range radio frequencies isn’t easy to do, and in a traffic jam where you have for example 200 cars in it, it’s not very easy to identify the car that is broadcasting. It is just matter of seconds for you to disconnect the Mp3 player and the broadcasting stops. It’s ephemeral media, short-form messages that are no more than a few minutes long, but also media which are fleeting in the way they circulate. As the traffic jams open up, you move and in cities like Tehran there is a good chance that you will get stuck in another traffic jam in other parts of the city very soon.

How will you get people to use these practices and technologies?

I’m trying to get in touch with activists outside of Iran, but it’s really hard to get in touch with them because of privacy and trust issues. I needed to wait for the right time to get in touch with them and now I’m trying because I have something to show them.

How will you present it to them?

It depends on the people I will be in touch with. I don’t know yet how I will present it. Maybe in the form of a proposal of one of many possible solutions or meet them in person, but that is less likely to happen.

The activists you want to meet, will they be the Data DJs?

Yes, the majority of the activists who are outside of Iran have already been acting as Data DJs in the last two years, as well as people inside the country. But the activists inside could also be the Bees. But they can have different roles because when the Internet is shut down then the connection between people inside and outside are lost, so I need to have people on the inside that can also act as Data DJs and Bees at the same time.

What about reputation and trust within these informal networks of Data DJs, Ants and Bees?

This is a network among the activists inside and outside of the country. They know each other and they know how to get in touch through their informal social networks that they already have. For the rest of the people who receive these news, there are different ways to verify the messages. Regular citizens do not have access to the core of the network. Amphibious Media is a tool for activists and social movements to spread the news around and issue of trust is something within their own social network.

Amphibious Media was designed for the second and third phase of a social movement, when the social movements start to organizing themselves and when the collective actions start. The messages will thus not be mainly “news” but rather information on when and where the next protest will be. As you go through the city, you will get different messages from different activists. If you hear a message again and again and again, you can almost be certain that the information is correct because it comes not from a central broadcaster but from several broadcasters. You can, of course, not totally trust the whole thing because you are not in contact with the “real” person. There is a chance that the government CAN get into it but the point is that there won’t be only one news source so you can always verify the information with other news sources as well.

What if the government has 10 or 50 people infiltrating the system?

Actually, something like that happened in 2006 in Egypt. The government got to Facebook and changed the whole story and they then arrested all the activists that showed up for a protest. But if you look at the whole picture, it’s more like a cat-and-mouse game. If you use the web, the infiltrators will be there. Whatever channel you use, infiltrators will be there. It’s an ongoing challenge and a battle between the activists and the government to make sure that what they are doing is the right thing. The government will always come up with new ways of infiltrating and the people will have to solve it again. Amphibious Media is not a long-term solution, it’s a short-term solution for very extreme situations. It’s not meant for the daily communication between people but rather for extreme situations.

Do you want to go back home to Iran?

It’s my country. Maybe not tomorrow but in the future I will have to go back.

Would your family be in danger if the government knew what you are doing?

As long as the government doesn’t find out about my project, I don’t think they’re in danger. My own security is not my first priority, it’s my family and friends and the people I have been in touch with for this project. I’m more worried about them than about myself. The minute I decided to go for this project, I accepted the risks of carrying it out. If you fight for freedom, there is a price you have to pay.

What is the situation in Iran right now?

People are still fighting for what they believe in. The green movement is still in need of a way to get its messages to a larger group of people inside the country and I hope my project can help the movement and other movements that are facing the same problems, the total mass media blackout.

What is the time-frame you are working according to?

As far as I know, the movement for change in Egypt started in early 2000’s. The January 25 revolution was the outcome of years of fighting. In Iran, it’s not easy to say how long it will take. Maybe two years, maybe ten years. I can’t say for sure.

Would you be interested to get into politics?

Plato said: “Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.” So I have to do something, but to be a politician? No. I want to remain on the peoples’ side and to help the green movement because I believe in it.

Does going back to Iran scare you?

No. I’m one of many people that fight for freedom of this country. I’m part of the whole group, the whole green movement. People choose different methods to fight for what they believe in with the tools that they have. Design is my tool and this is the way I fight.

To get in contact with X, contact the author of this post.

Image credit: nuztorad CC:BY-NC-SA

Designers are facing many challenges when trying to engage in solving today’s wicked problems. First, it is not only about physical stuff and mass-production, it is also about looking into social issues, relationships and creating engagement in communities. Second, its about working across professional and sector boundaries to create new alliances and collaborations.

With a departure in theory and practice from both social innovation and design, but also relating to other academic fields, I will through interviews and design experiments explore what design can contribute to the field of social innovation and what constitutes the emerging design research field design for social innovation.

My focus will be on designing networks and how social innovation often is driven and created by coalitions or wider networks of actors from different disciplines and sectors (private, public and third sector) connecting what Murray et al. (2010) calls “the bees” (creative individuals or small organisations with ideas) and “the trees” (larger institutions with power and money). The role of the designer will be to involve the different stakeholders in the process and design WITH (Leadbeater, 2009) them rather than FOR them. Here, my point of departure will be from the rich tradition of participatory design but I will also relate to concepts like co-creation and co-production. Other relevant design approaches in this work will be service design, strategic design, meta-design and transformation design. In trying to not become to instrumental and avoiding the trap of social engineering, I would also try to use critical design as a lens to look at the work through a more critical perspective and as a tool to reach other dimensions or values in social innovation solutions.

A goal for this kind of design practice is to create social change. My focus will (as for now) be more specifically to create – through participatory design with stakeholders and communities where parts of the design thinking and practice is transferred to the participants – some kind of “adaptive capacity” where individuals, organisations and communities capacity to create change or reach goals by themselves is strengthened.

The ultimate goal is to strengthen individuals and communities resilience (the ability to deal with change and continue to develop).

The MEDEA approach
Our way of working at MEDEA resembles many of the established approaches in design for social innovation (co-design, transformation design and design thinking). However, in our practice (see e.g. Bjorgvinsson et al. 2004 (pdf), 2010, Seravalli et al. 2011), we put much emphasis on building long-term relationships and on using prototyping as a way to evoke and explore dilemmas. Our activities could be characterized by three aspects:

• setting up collaborative design processes where diverse stakeholders with complementary skills work side by side and where mutual respect and learning is supported;
• building long-term relationships and trust with stakeholders. This can lead to the foundation of open-ended designing networks;
• performing early prototyping where possibilities are explored in real contexts but where potential dilemmas also are highlighted.

Social innovation demands multiple perspectives and we collaborate with NGOs, municipalities and business partners. Often we establish relationships with them separately to explore possibilities related to their own agenda, getting multiple starting points for potential projects and innovation. At the same time we also try to see how different interests could be integrated.

In one of our cases we are working with an NGO of immigrant women, Herrgårds Kvinnoförening (HKF). Their activities are focusing on cooking, textile design, traditional clothing and carpet production. During the first meetings with them they expressed the desire of being more integrated in the Swedish society by finding opportunities where their abilities and skills could be valued. Instead of setting up a short and well-defined design process, we have slowly been building a long-term relationship with them. In this process we are not acting as the smart designers and imposing solutions on them, rather, we are facilitating HKF in being the designers and developing ideas about how they could contribute to society.

One of their ideas was that they could become a resource for refugee children hosted in Malmö, e.g. by providing a cooking class for the orphans. Our role as designers was then to help them in prototyping this as a potential service by, for example, establishing a connection with the media company Good World (one of the members of the MEDEA network) who let HKF and the children use the kitchen in their premises (see Kreativa kvinnor och social innovation).

This prototype proved that the women could provide an important support for these youths, but it also highlighted some potential dilemmas. For example a union’s representative responded very negatively to the idea of a non-commercial NGO doing business and accused HKF to compete under unfair conditions and ‘stealing’ regular jobs. Another dilemma concerned power relations within the womens’ families: some of the husbands were upset with the idea of the women providing an income.

Furthermore, it clearly emerged that HKF needs support in navigating the Swedish bureaucracy as well as in setting up business plans. In response to this we tried, through the intermediating of a start-up match making platform DoDream, to connect HKF to the Göran Network, a network of successful women in Sweden. At the moment some women from HKF and Göran are involved in a process of exploring mutual interests and have divided themselves in five theme groups: food, health, craft, a book project and gardening, to explore different possible business opportunities.

In this process we have had a more passive role, actually letting go of the creativity monopoly, and the process have been led by a woman from the Göran network. This process raises questions about how balance between steering a process and letting go to let it self-organize. In the HKF case new ideas and new possible collaborators adds on in a constantly evolving web of possibilities. Who should be in charge to manage that and how?

Incubator for social innovation and Innovation forums
Although NGOs such as HKF has been a central starting point for us to explore new opportunities in social innovation, we also collaborate with the municipality of Malmö where some civil servants are eager to learn about design and social innovation. Our approach is to let them know about our experiences and results as well as supporting their ongoing projects by organizing design workshops and meetings where we also bring in the actors from our network. These workshops act as mutual learning spaces where we explore how design could make sense in their context. Through them, the design opportunities are brought to another level, more closely connected to policy, where civil servants in important positions have the power to implement large-scale change.

During the spring we have also led, on commission of the city of Malmö, a series of workshop to explore the possibility and the context for establishing an incubator for social innovation in Malmö. Three workshops have been carried through where actors from academia, private, public and third sector have worked together. The result was summarized in a report that stressed the fact that there is already a lot of support structures out there in the city but they have to bee co-ordinated. This more distributed structure could work as a pre-incubator able to spot and support promising ideas on a local level and in that way complement a more traditional and central incubator.

The ideas of a more distributed pre-incubator have shown to fit well with city’s ideas about “innovation forums”, small units based in connection to the five “area programs” that should help lift the areas of Herrgården, Holma-Kroksbäck, Seved, Lindängen and Kirseberg out of deprivation. At the moment I am involved in a pre-study about the establishing of these innovation forums.

If you are interested in what Anders Emilson is doing, get in touch with him here.

Further reading
- Dealing with Dilemmas: Participatory Approaches in Design for Social Innovation
- Kartläggning av design för social innovation
- “Inkubatorn finns därute” – en rapport från Living Labs Kvarteret

Image credit: tamdotcom CC:BY-NC-ND

Emilson, Anders; Hillgren, Per-Anders; Seravalli, Anna. (2011): “Dealing with Dilemmas: Participatory Approaches in Design for Social Innovation”, Swedish Design Research Journal no 1, 2011:23-29.

Abstract
In recent years, design for social innovation has emerged as a new research field. Design has been acknowledged by public agencies and NGOs as one of the tools to tackle the complexity of social issues. However, critical voices have also been raised about the limits and gaps of design applied in this field, emphasizing the need for connections with other disciplines involved in social innovation. These critiques stress that designers engaged with social issues need to reflect on their weaknesses in order to avoid to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and being naive. With a background in participatory design we have developed some practical approaches that we present in this article as a possible way for dealing with the weaknesses of design when applied in social innovation.

Download “Dealing with Dilemmas: Participatory Approaches in Design for Social Innovation” (pdf)

This paper was originally published in Swedish Design Research Journal #1.11.

Image credit: Julia Manzerova CC:BY-ND.

The article Active, Local, Connected: Strategic and Methodological Insights in Three Cases by Nicola Morelli says that environmental sustainability cannot be achieved without a focus on social and economic sustainability and that there are great social innovation opportunities for designers, industrial companies, and institutions. You can download the full article here or access it through the mitpressjournals.org website.

A short excerpt from the article:

Questions of Strategies: Activating Local and Individual Resources
In the past few decades, the debate on sustainability has explored many directions for improving the environmental health and efficiency of our planet. In the past few years, though, it has become clear that environmental sustainability cannot be achieved without a focus on social and economic sustainability. The most recent economic crisis has further clarified this connection by bringing to light how the failure of large multinational companies has influenced the social and economic traumas. For this reason, any social and economic strategies for future development must be applied in the area where social quality, environmental quality, and appropriate and sustainable forms of economic development converge.

This area defines a complex landscape of solutions that describes different and interwoven paths. To understand this paper, some of these paths need to be better described:

Localization of solutions
Although globalized companies are a reality that economic crises cannot wipe out, the most relevant factors for competitiveness are placed in the local context (Becattini 2004). The need to provide context-specific solutions is forcing companies to develop their global strategies in alliance and cooperation with those in the local contexts in which they operate. Although the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of strategies developed in this context should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, some essential characteristics of these strategies are intrinsically sustainable. The decentralization of production, indeed, tends to reduce the environmental costs of transport, but in addition (and this is probably more relevant) those strategies tend to activate human, material, and natural resources in the local context. In particular, the activation of local human resources (i.e., through local services, manufacturers, institutions, and users) makes it possible to realize a regenerative process: together with the final outcome of the production process, the activation of such resources also stimulates the regeneration of values, of knowledge, of the institutions, and of the natural environment. When related to a specific context, such as industrial districts, such local co-production processes have proven to be a source of competitive advantage, both for local contexts and for companies participating in it (Becattini 2004).

Networking resources
In a centralized industrial culture, large companies produce solutions for larger or smaller target groups. This “top-down” structure clearly separates producers from users. Producers are creating value, whereas users (or consumers, as defined in this logical framework) are “destroying” such value (Normann and Ramirez 1994; Ramirez 1999). This logical structure dominates the paradigm of traditional industrial production and has been the guiding star for the development of industrial economies. According to this logic, the industrial system progressively relieves people from many of the tasks and responsibilities in their daily routines, from washing clothes to organizing parties (Normann 2000). The hidden risk in this idea is that, together with responsibilities and concerns, people are also deprived of their own practical, operative, and even social skills, thus generating a progressive waste of human resources (Manzini 2005). However, some signals are emerging that reveal the emergence of opposite trends, from both the production side and the consumption side. The signals from the production side come from companies that are revising their strategies through the direct involvement of users in the production process. Many companies are now considering such strategies to increase the flexibility of the production process and to generate highly personalized solutions, which ultimately push the boundaries of mass customization toward individual solutions (Morelli and Nielsen 2008). The same need for highly personalized and context-related solutions is stimulating individuals, groups, and organizations on the demand side to undertake individual and collective initiatives to solve very specific problems. Once again, the social and environmental quality of these initiatives should be analyzed case by case but their intrinsic characteristics are consistent with the main strategies for sustainability because they create networks among human and material resources in local contexts, thus allowing for short production chains. These new signals, both from the production side and from the consumption side, suggest a progressive shift in social and economic systems, from value chains (i.e., top-down production systems that clearly define and separate each value production phase) to a value constellation – a networked production system in which the value is coproduced by different actors, including producers, service providers, local institutions, and individual users.

Distributing solution potential
The shift from centralized models to networked ones also implies a shift from a model in which the power to generate solutions is concentrated in few places and social roles, to a model in which a relevant part of this power is distributed to local communities and individuals. The new model tends to increase the problem-solving capabilities of local communities. Such problem solving power is not an alternative to the traditional industrial production models, but rather is complementary to them. Industrial production’s strategies are based on top-down provision of clearly defined solutions (business and governments provide products and services to citizens), whereas the horizontal networks allow for an exchange of sticky resources – resources such as tacit knowledge, mutual understanding, and solidarity, which cannot be codified, institutionalized, or prescribed. The activation of such resources often discloses a landscape of new opportunities.

You can download the full article here or access it through the mitpressjournals.org website.

Nicola Morelli is Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University (Denmark). His main research interest is on strategies and methodologies for service design in the perspective of social and environmental sustainability. His recent research and teaching activities focus on the exploration of design strategies to support participation and activation of local resources in public services.

Image credit: tobiastoft CC:BY