Collaborative social innovation

Collaborative Social Innovation is a new method to create solutions to existing social and environmental problems. It is a method that converts problems into possibilities by seeing the potential for innovation within them, and by drawing on the immense creative potential of human beings situated in different contexts and positions in society.

The foundation of Collaborative Social Innovation is human beings’ innate urge to participate, instead of simply being spectators. Comtemporary phenomena such as the blogging culture, , open source, social entrepreneurship, the ever-growing number of NGOs worldwide, etc, could be seen as an indication that many people are no longer satisfied with being spectators. That they, to a still greater degree, want to take an active part in creating their own lives and the world around them.

Collaborative Social Innovation is a normative term which signifies that innovation should have social aim - firstly, because the world needs it, and secondly, because this entails a huge, yet unexploited market with immense possibilities. It is thus a term that proposes an entwining of the traditional enemies of business and charity. But since real social innovation requires a both generel and profound knowledge of human beings and society, such knowledge needs to be put into action. And such knowledge rarely exists in just one organisation or individual.

Thus, the point with Collaborative Social Innovation is that social innovation must be created through a collaborative proces, with access to as many parties and as much knowledge in the early phases of the innovation proces as possible. Such knowledge sharing can either take place face to face or through communication channels such as the Internet - meaning that the knowledge can basically come from anyone. The idea with Collaborative Social Innovation is to enable anyone who might be interested to contribute to a project with a social aim, or to enable them to find the people they need for their own social project. Most importantly though, it aims at enabling people to make an active effort to create a better world with human beings from across cultures, mindsets and national borders.

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