1. The role of online networks in social
innovation
Gwendolyn Carpenter
Danish Technological Institute

2. On the agenda today:
1. ICT as an enabler of SI – examples
2. Research framework for analysing
the impact of ICT
3. The 4 relevant perspectives
4. Ongoing work - emerging findings
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EU’s 7th framework programme
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3. ICT as an enabler of SI – letting examples speak
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4. MicroGiving: Be my eyes
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5. Empowernment – anti-corruption

6. Research framework for analysing the impact
of ICT in Social Innovation
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7. Research Context :Technology and societal needs
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8. Applied Research Framework
(D8.1)
7) Outputs,
outcomes,
impacts
2) ICT &
non-ICT
tool mix
1) Online
(ICT)
networking,
media &
collaboration
tools
8) Social
innovation (SI)
meeting social
need,
developing
social relation-
ships, and
achieving
effective social
impact
9a) ICT enabling SI
9b) SI enabling new
ICT
3) Actors: types
& roles
5) Use
4) Actor
relationships
6) How used: methods,
techniques, practices

9. Approaching ICTs from 4 perspectives
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10. 1) Technology perspective –
taxonomy of online networks
enabling social innovation
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11. 6 platform types
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Content creation
Issue identification
Matching assets to needs
Matching finance to
needs
Solving problems
Action on problems
Platform continuum

12. Problems & needs
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Democracy and
governance
Sustainability
Economic
improvement
Health, wellbeing
and care
Behaviour, lifestyles,
community and culture
Basic utilities
and
infrastructures
Privacy, safety and
security
Building localities
Information
and content
Peer to Patent;
Global voices;
Wikipedia
Poderopedia;
Mamzdanie
Debategraph
Debategraph Peer to Patent;
Demotix
Ygeianet Global voices;
Wikipedia; Demotix
Data
Ushahidi;
Crowdmap;
Wikileaks
Safecast;
Crowdmap;
amee; Mobosens
Safecast;
Crowdmap;
Mobosen
Safecast;
Crowdmap;
Mobosens
Safecast; Ushahidi;
Crowdmap;
Wikileaks;
Mobosens
Safecast;
Crowdmap;
FixMyStreet;
Mobosens
Resources,
excess
capacity
Tutorpool AirBNB;
TaskRabbit;
Neighborgods
Landshare
Getaround
Spinlister
AirBNB; TaskRabbit;
getaround; time
exchange; Spinlister
AirBNB; Neighborgoods;
Landshare; Tutorpool;
Time exchange;
Spinlister
AirBNB;
Landshare;
Tutorpool;
Boroume;
Xariseto
Finance
Citizinvestor;
Razoo;
Crowdrise
Kiva; MyC4 Kickstarter; Kiva
MyC4; Citizinvestor;
Razoo; Crowdrise;
Communitae
Groopio Citizinvestor;
Groopio
Kiva; MyC4;
Citizinvestor
Skills,
competen-
cies, ideas
Challenge OpenIDEO Challenge;
Innocentive; Kaggle;
OpenIDEO; Fold It;
Idea; Connection;
Idea Bounty
Fold It Kaggle OpenIDEO
Time,
enterprise,
initiative
Avaaz;
Change.org;
Brickstarter
Avaaz;
Brickstarter
Brickstarter Action for
Happiness; Patients
like me; Cure
Together; Cancer
commons
Avaaz; Change.org;
Action for Happiness;
Brickstarter; Patients
like me; Cure Together;
Cancer commons
Brickstarter Avaaz
Change.org
Brickstarter
Assets&tools

13. 2) Community perspective –
communities, knowledge and
innovation: some lessons from
corporates
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14. Communities of Practice (1)
 Innovation depends critically on the
application of knowledge – sometimes
new knowledge, but often also old
knowledge applied to new challenges or
opportunities
 Corporate experience is that this almost
always requires well-functioning
communities of practice (CoP), defined as
the social organization of a group of
people jointly pursuing a shared practice,
often in the workplace but in principle in
any context.
 A CoP is characterised by high personal
interactivity between different skill sets
and specialisations in which doing and
showing their knowledge is just as
important as preparing manuals or
databases
 For example in an architectural firm
consisting of designers, draftsmen,
materials specialists, environmental
and energy experts, legal and
planning advisors, etc., who interact
to complete tasks. The power of the
CoP is that different experts
cooperate on a day-to-day basis thus
building up shared knowledge.

15. Communities of Practice (2)
 CoPs are traditionally small scale and
characterised by a great deal of tacit
knowledge, so the challenge is to exploit
their power over distance and by using
ICT which will inevitably make their
knowledge at least partially codified.
 What has been achieved in the quest by
elite companies to achieve superior
performance in innovation during recent
years – from which we believe that
social innovation has much to learn – is
the ability to optimize the performance
of the overall organization in terms of
knowledge transformations, including
understanding the overall flow from
very local and very tacit to global and
codified, and of course not least
optimizing the use of ICT.
For example ICT and online media:
 optimize and leverage all routine
community functions
 become medium for embedding new
knowledge and practices
 make the online integration of parallel
communities in different places
possible, enabling distributed, virtual
communities
 provide shared tool-boxes

16. 3) Network perspective –
networks and the network effect
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17. Three main types of network
Random networks
 Unstructured, highly open to chance events, e.g. getting flu virus
 No or very few hubs
 Once innovation established, often by chance, can spread virally and
very fast, like fashion, through ‘undirected copying’
 Often short lived.
Scale-free networks
 Most people have small number of links to other people
 Significant number of hubs with large number of links and high
influence
 If one or more hubs takes up an innovation, it’s likely links will do so
as well through ‘directed’ copying
 Relatively stable in medium term
Small-world networks
 All people have small numbers of links to other people
 No or few hubs; most people connected to each other: inward-
looking group with few external links
 Resistant to outside change
 But if reach critical number of adopters, change is rapid, widespread
and stable over longer-term through ‘directed’ copying

18. 26/06/2014
Non-networked world
 normal (Gaussian) distribution
 non-skewed, no network effect
 non-social behaviour
 outcomes are independent of each
other, i.e. not influenced by other
outcomes
 outcomes do not interact
Networked world
 power law (non-Gaussian) distribution
 skewed, network effect with ‘long-tail’ of
outcomes
 results from human and social behaviour
 most outcomes are influenced by other
outcomes (through information, copying, etc.)
 outcomes interact with each other
outcomes
frequency

19. 26/06/2014
Networked world with ICT: copying and innovation

20. 4) Critical perspectives on ICT
relevant for social innovation
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Critical perspectives
 Access and the ‘digital divide’
 Who makes the technology and for whom?
 Identity, fragmentation and control
 Privacy and big data
 Challenges of online activism
 unaccountability and ‘street politics’
 self selecting elites and the ‘digital mob’
 trivialisation, short termism and nimbyism
 coarsening the debate
 apathy and lack of understanding of the
participatory and political process
 can there be too much (online)
participation?

22. Collecting Evidence from the ground
Thematic casestudy report
(to be published Sept 2014)
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23. Shifting towards impact analysis – introducing
the thematic approach to casestudies
OECD Better Life Index European Public Sector
Innovation Scoreboard
 Income  Economic Affairs
 Jobs
 Work-life balance
 (also covered by economic
affairs)
 Health  Health
 Education  Education
 Community
 Housing
 Civic engagement
 Life satisfaction
 Safety
 Housing and community
amenities
 Recreation, culture and
religion
 Social protection
 Public order and safety
 General public services
 Environment  Environmental protection
 Defence
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Domain themes Cross-cutting themes
 Health
 Education
 Employment/Job
Creation
 Place-making
 Sharing Economy
 Resource
Efficiency from an
environmental
perspective (CO2)

24. What we are currently doing
Theme Focus Area
Health  Preventive & Self Help
 Personalized & smart patient environment
 Supporting smart infrastructure for
integrated health & social care
Education  Widening access to education
 Personalized education & New Learning
environments & knowledge commons
 A multi-partner approach to education
Employment
/ Job creation
 Preparing for work
 Matchmaking
 Creating and doing work
Place-making  Smart places
 Local community development
 Civic engagement
Sharing Economy  Innovating the exchange of time and talent
 Activating the value of dormant assets
 Making Unachievable Assets viable
Resource
Efficiency from an
environmental
perspective (CO2)
 Climate Change and the reduction of carbon
emissions
 Resource depletion and waste
 Sharing cities
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Ongoing work:
• Yin’s ‘multiple case
study design’
approach
• 2 empirical
casestudies per focus
area = 36 case studies

25. A model of systemic innovation (used by the
OECD in relation to education)
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26. Emerging findings
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27. For more information please contact:
Gwendolyn Carpenter
Senior Research Manager
Mobil +45 72 20 18 69
gwc@teknologisk.dk
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