Emergence by Design

Emergence by Design (MD)

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 284625

Partner
European Centre for Living Technology (Coordinator), Italy
Kennilsland (Netherlands
University of Warwaw (Poland)
Factlink (NetherlandsL)
INRIA (France)
Euclid Network/Young Foundation (UK)
Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden)

Website
emergencebydesign.org

Context
The overriding imperative for our society is continued economic growth. The engine of this growth is innovation – the creation of new kinds of artifacts. But the increasing frequency and scale of environmental, social and economic crises urge us to pose the question: is the innovation society sustainable? How does the Innovation Society respond to these crises? Its ideology offers space for two kinds of response, one primarily economic and the other political. The economic response is via market driven innovation: the market responds to opportunities to remediate the adverse consequences that innovation cascades may generate. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that, despite its undeniable creativity in generating novelty, the market is not quick in detecting the negative consequences of innovation cascades, nor is it efficient in responding to them when it does detect them.
It seems as though Western society’s innovation processes and its dependence on them lie at the root of the sustainability crises. To address this, we will need new types of processes for innovation.
For EU to become leader in the promotion of sustainable development (see, more recently, also H2020 objectives), the vision of INSITE project as a Coordination Action, has been that of fostering the interaction and collaboration among civil society organizations and scientists from diverse fields. From some of the partners of this first project, emerged a research project “Emergence by Design” aimed at developing new theories of innovation and action, as well as new research practices and tools (also ICT), based on the conduction of some case studies.

Concept
Both the projects (see INSITE) – coordinated by the European Centre for Living Technology, UNIVE – are intended to mobilize civil society to construct a socially sustainable future, by designing generative interactions and feedback loops between technical artifacts and social problems/narratives (to start through a coordination action and a research project). To move towards this vision, INSITE assumptions are that we need to bring people from different communities together to develop and promote a set of common ideas and strategies aiming towards a sustainable future, while MD’s are that we also need to design new processes, powered by new ICT solutions, informed by new theory. This summary requires a lot of un-packing. It also requires a codicil, which is the slogan of one of our practitioner consortium members: “Big ambitions, small steps.”

Strategy
ICT platform design and development based on the conduction of several studies related to innovation projects. The project aims to develop new ICT tools (generalized ICT), in line with complexity of the present society and the dynamics of social innovation processes. These tools will assist DIPOs’ (Distributed Policy Organizations) leaders, and participants in the dynamic evaluation of their social innovation projects, in particular to more advanced processes of narrative construction and analysis. Tools and methods are founded on a scientific paradigm that aims to overcome some limits of mainstream theories of social action, historical interpretation and narrative construction (i.e. the hypothesis of rational behaviour, path dependence, etc…).

Activities
Conduction of several case studies, from DIPOs (Distributed Innovation Policy Organizations)- mediated projects so as to develop a new approach to social innovation projects evaluation (i.e. Dynamic Evaluation approach). and to better design and develop dedicated ICT tools that can support them (i.e. MD platform, still under development).
Moreover, MD team is working also on the theoretical development of innovation processes, so as to provide a robust framework to analyze and understand when, how and why large-scale societal transitions – with cascades of technical and social changes – take place. Such changes, consisting of transformations of strongly entangled social, technical, political and economic entities, is highly non- linear and unpredictable.

Development
MD is still ongoing, although most of the case studies – Green Communities project (Italy), Education Pioneers (NL) and 10%White (PL) – have already been concluded, and currently being analyzed, others are still ongoing. ICT tools (that should be integrated in the MD platform) are under development as well as the case studies focused on initiating a synthetic approach to theory development through a series of case studies (from the automobility study to the history of marketing). End of the project December 2014.

Results
Up to now deliverables concerning the MD platform technical design and development have been produced, together with a deliverable on the design of Dynamic Evalution as a process and a Manifesto of Social Innovation.
Final expected results: 1. Develop a theory of emergence by design; 2. Develop and test a prototype scalable software tool to assist DIPOs managing online communities of social innovators; 3. Design a process of dynamic evaluation for social innovation projects, which includes the development of different tools and techniques.

• Dissemination* (research communication and possible results)
Website, Participation and organization of conference and workshops, production of posters and oral presentations, Writing of articles and scientific papers, Exhibitions. End of May 2014: definition of the final dissemination strategy of the MD project.

Tools
In general (among the three case studies) the project have used/produced: Papers and conference presentations, Open space posters, Photos and audiovisual-recording of interviews and meetings, Visualization of projects strategies and timelines, Visualization of communication and relationships networks, etc. both as part of the empirical base of data to be analyzed and for the restitution/feedback of outcomes to the communities involved in the projects.

Audiovisual instruments used are integral part of the case studies research design (both as objects of analysis and tools to be used and developed), and they are also intertwined with the strategies undertaken by the DIPOs for the project deployment and participant engagement. In general, the materials have been produced ad hoc, and most of them have been shown for internal/project use or during meetings/conferences/workshops, although with some exceptions, e.g. for the public exhibition – composed of photos, videos, etc. – organized by the UNIWAW team together with the artists involved in the 10%White project.