Enhancing Social Innovation : case: Concept Design of Innovillage Innovation Forum

Abstract

Societies are facing multiple societal challenges. Social innovations provide solutions to address the societal needs and help to solve the complex challenges. Therefore, there is a need for enhancing the development of social innovations.

This research investigates digital open innovation platforms and their potential to support social innovation. In addition, the thesis aims to examine what the challenges and needs of social innovation actors are concerning interaction with other innovators. The focus is on the users of the Innovillage co-creation platform. The purpose of the thesis is to develop a concept for the Innovillage online forum to provide interaction possibilities for social innovation actors.

The theoretical framework of the thesis consists of the concepts of social innovation, open innovation, co-creation, and the quadruple helix. Based on the literature reviewed, digital open innovation platforms seem to have the great potential to support social innovation by fostering collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and collective action and by providing an environment for interaction. Digital platforms make it possible to co-create knowledge and solutions at a wide scale. To be able to support social innovation, a platform needs to provide the three basic functions of platforms: match, facilitate, and pull. The thesis contributes to the literature by providing a taxonomy of different types of digital open innovation platforms and an elaborated framework for digital platform for social innovation.

The empirical research was a qualitative case study. According to the findings of the study, the main challenges concerning interaction between innovators were related to knowledge and experience sharing, finding and contacting experts and developers, and matchmaking of societal challenges, ideas, and innovators. The findings of the study confirmed the theories and findings reported in the literature. In addition, new information could be provided by identifying four different dimensions of interactivity needs in the context of social innovation: ideation, networking, co-creation, and scaling.

Service design methods and tools were utilized for the development of the concept for the online forum for social innovation. The concept provides practical guidelines and a prototype for developing functions that consider interaction-related user needs of several user groups. The concept is designed to benefit the further development of the case platform, Innovillage, in order to enhance interaction of innovation actors. However, it could be transferred into other digital platforms or contexts, as well.