Collectively Designing Social Worlds. History and Potential of Social Innovation

Released under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) in the peer reviewed series Design International.

What are the social facts that led to the need to activate social innovation processes? What is (and what can be) the role of design in these processes?
The challenges of modernity and post-modernity have led designers to become often protagonists and activators of sustainable and social innovation processes, possible thanks to users’ and stakeholders’ involvement in co-creation processes.
This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach to eviscerate social innovation as a concept with its foundation in theoretical, political, and methodological domains. The discussion is based on sociology and design. The first, sociology, in connection with other disciplines, such as geography and economics, mainly defines the theoretical and methodological framework of reference; the second, design, mostly deals with experimental and applied research, and it does through the presentation of research projects.
The operative definitions of creativity and innovation will be provided in order to historically and culturally frame them as foundations of the social innovation concept, which emerged and consolidated because of specific social facts and changes. A special focus on design and consumption will be provided in light of their approach to sustainability issues, looking at designers and consumers as agents of change. In the conclusions, after the presentation of two research projects, the Grounded Theory's methodological approach will be proposed as preferable in social innovation research processes; the concept of well-being scalability will be introduced; and questions will be asked about the future that social innovation co-creation processes may have in light of the recent health emergency.
In this book, sociology and design theories and methodologies are interrelated and sustain each other; for this reason, the book is particularly suitable for students, researchers, and practitioners from these two fields.