Empowering Energy Community Nichein Flanders: A Study on Social Innovation, and Transition Strategies

The global shift towards sustainable and renewable energy sources is an undeniable necessity. Energy communities, grounded in principles of community participation and environmental sustainability, are emerging as key players in driving this transformation. Flanders, a region in Belgium, has witnessed the rise of energy communities as they take...

Empower Cociety: A systemic design approach to unravel Cociety’s potential and design a Social Innovation Strategy

In the last decade, European citizens had to overcome multiple severe disruptive events like Covid-19, extreme weather and war at the EU-boarder. With ongoing climate change and political instability, more crises are expected to arise. To deal with these crises an increased resilience of individuals, organisations and society is needed. One...

Backing Incremental Housing: The Role of Social Enterprises assisting Incremental Housing

Top-down solutions toward Incremental Housing have been criticized because the government has imposed unrealistic and unaffordable standards. On a bottom-up approach, Social Enterprises have been recognized for their contribution to global challenges by implementing service and product innovation and their intermediary role in the processes...

Drivers and Obstacles to Implementing Co-creation in Sustainable Heating: A Multiple Case Study Addressing the Institutional Rules underlying Co-creation

Reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is vital to limit global warming to 1.5◦C. Decarbonizing the heating sector that is globally responsible for half of total energy consumption is necessary to achieve climate-neutrality goals. The complex nature of the heating sector (characterized by variable market demands, and complicated stakeholder...

Fruitful friction as a strategy to scale social innovations

New approaches to overcome complex societal problems of today are the need of the hour, especially to enable the transition to a sustainable future (Concilio & Tosoni, 2019). Here, social innovations present new ways to tackle global problems on a local scale; that when put together, can create a transformation on a systemic level while...