Creativity Meets Rationale:
Collaboration Patterns for
Social Innovation
Aldo de Moor
CommunitySense
WWW.COMMUNITYSENSE.NL
FARG Seminar
University of Alabama in Huntsville
30 August 2013
Social innovation• Many definitions…
• Social (Stanford Social Innovation Review)– A novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient,
sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value
created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private
individuals
• Economic (e.g. Midpoint Brabant)– Governments, enterprises and educational institutes jointly explore
new possibilities, discover markets, develop areas and facilities
• Summarizing– Jointly with all stakeholders find sustainable solutions for societally
relevant problems
– Create individual and societal added value
2
Midden-Brabant: THE Dutch social
innovation region
Social Innovation Award Academy
Transforming education: Prins Heerlijk
Transforming healthcare: Into D’Mentia
Social innovation collaboration model
Developer
network
Stakeholder
network
C1 C2
C4 C5
User network
C3
Core Community
The social innovation process
8
Source: http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/Social_Innovator_020310.pdf
Scaling public libraries innovation
9
Collaborative sensemaking
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Source: BNB/Cubiss public library sensemaking session, May 2013
Collaboration patterns –
sharing lessons learnt
• Creativity & rationale are co-dependent in design
• Patterns: relatively stable solutions to recurring problems at
the right level of abstraction
• Collaboration patterns: reusable lessons learnt on how best
to use specific functionalities for particular collaborative
purposes
• Root ontology of collaboration patterns is the socio-technical
conversation context framework
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Conversations in context
Participation
Look
Do
Interact
Collaborate
SIC cross-case role analysis
SIC cross-case tool analysis
Social innovation concept type
hierarchy
…
SIC-model: filling it in
Developer
network
Stakeholder
network
C5
User network
Core Community
Using common conceptual ground…
An (enabled) communication pattern template
To reuse collaboration lessons learnt
A composite collaboration pattern:
reducing collaborative fragmentation (C5)
Many applications of
collaboration patterns
• Collaborative sensemaking
• Analyzing differences between requirements & functionalities;
existing and good/best practices
• Configuring collaboration systems
• Growing “collaborative landscapes” by linking “collaborative
islands”
• Activating and scaling collaboration
• Bridging theory and practice by acting as socio-technical design
hypotheses
• ….
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Linking technical & social innovation
in Noord-Brabant
And in Alabama?
Conclusions
• Social innovation is a fuzzy, intricate process
• Involves very complex collaboration networks, evolving over time
• Social innovation collaboration requires careful socio-technical
systems analysis & design
• Collaboration patterns capture reusable lessons learnt
• Working on a – Social innovation collaboration pattern language
– hands-on methodology to describe, analyze, compare, (re)use, and
evolve social innovation collaboration patterns
• Towards more scalable and sustainable social innovation,
having deep impact on society
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Reference: A. de Moor (2012). Creativity Meets Rationale - Collaboration Patterns for Social Innovation. In
J. Carroll (ed.), Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience by Design, Springer, Berlin. ISBN
978-1-4471-4110-5 - http://communitysense.nl/papers/2012_De%20Moor_Creativity_Meets_Rationale-
Collaboration_Patterns_for_Social_Innovation.pdf
