A Call for Scaling Literacy: On strategic dimensions and directions of systemic scaling

Scaling is a motif describing the proportionate growth of innovation. Over the past decade, scholars have adapted the original idea of scaling from business to differentiate different ways to scale that are more appropriate in the context of social innovation. Scaling is sometimes thought of as a panacea: it is the end result, purpose, or answer...

Scaling Circular Collaborations in Cities through engagement

Circular economy has gained traction within companies resulting in many exploring new product and business model combinations. Yet, to transition towards a circular economy on a societal level requires going beyond new product and market-based opportunities. To enable societal level change, ecosystem-level innovations are important and so...

A collaborative learning infrastructure to build capacity for urban transformations

An increasing number of social innovators are leveraging cities as urban learning ecosystems in order to experiment with design approaches to tackle societal challenges at a local level. However, the scale and complexity of these challenges force them to constantly acquire new capabilities to advance the local experimentation towards systemic...

Scaling Local Bottom-Up Innovations through Value Co-Creation

Bottom-up initiatives of active citizens are increasingly demonstrating sustainable practices within local ecosystems. Local urban farming, sustainable agri-food systems, circular supply chains, and community fablabs are exemplary ways of tackling global challenges on a local level. Although promising in accelerating towards future-proof...

Collaborative Sensemaking of Design-Enabled Urban Innovations:: The MappingDESIGNSCAPES Case

Wicked societal problems, such as environmental issues and climate<br/>change, are complex, networked problems involving numerous intertwined issues,no optimal solutions, and a wide range of stakeholders. Cities are problem owners and living labs for finding solutions through design-enabled innovation initiatives. However, to reach collective...

Fruitful friction as a strategy to scale social innovations: A conceptual framework to enable the emergence of common ground in multi-stakeholder social innovation projects

Social innovations are promising to tackle today's complex global challenges, especially when they scale, leading to a higher impact, which can generate asocietal transformation. The current work elaborates on scaling deep, a specific scaling strategy aiming to shift cultural values, mindsets and beliefs. However, applying this strategy in...

Supporting Urban Innovators’ Reflective Practice

Over the past years, a growing number of local initiatives are generating solutions for societal challenges in their cities. However, the scale and complexity of these challenges force urban innovators to constantly adapt and learn, having to acquire new capabilities that will help them advance towards systemic change. In the current work, we...

Considering the human-dimension to make sustainable transitions actionable

Sustainable innovation and transitions are increasingly gaining traction within academia, industries, and policymakers. Despite the research efforts, sustaining innovation and operationalizing transitions still remains a barely explored field. The pragmatic step from understanding towards doing is often not made explicit in the literature. In...

Why novel sanitary systems are hardly introduced?

Innovations are required in urban infrastructures due to the pressing needs for mitigating climate change and prevent resource depletion. In order to address the slow pace of innovation in urban systems, this paper analyses factors involved in attempts to introduce novel sanitary systems. Today new requirements are important: sanitary systems...

Future options for sewage and drainage systems three scenarios for transitions and continuity

The challenge of sustainable development requires cities to aim for drastic improvements in the systems that support its vital functions. Innovating these systems can be extremely hard, and might take lots of time. A transparent and democratic strategy is important to guarantee support for change. Such a process should aim at developing...

Open Innovation Strategies for Sustainable Urban Living

Cities are increasingly seen as having an important role in tackling societal challenges related to climate change, while open innovation is increasingly accepted as a new way of working for governments. In the current work, we explore the role of open innovation to tackle global challenges on a city level. In the context of the city of...

Robots and us: towards an economics of the ‘Good Life’

(Expected) adverse effects of the ‘ICT Revolution’ on work and opportunities for individuals to use and develop their capacities give a new impetus to the debate on the societal implications of technology and raise questions regarding the ‘responsibility’ of research and innovation (RRI) and the possibility of achieving ‘inclusive and...

Co-Creation Dynamics in Urban Living Labs

Citizens and urban policy makers are experimenting with collaborative ways to tackle wicked urban issues, such as today’s sustainability challenges. In this article, we consider one particular way of collaboration in an experimental setting: Urban Living Labs (ULLs). ULLs are understood as spatially embedded sites for the co-creation of...

Co-creative partnerships as catalysts for social change

Mundane cities are challenged to design for unpredictable and rapidly changing futures. In the current work, we refer to thesechallenges as a collaborative design challenge and explore how co-creative partnerships can enable a participatory turn by establishinga new social infrastructure. The corresponding citizen-centred design approach offers...

Strategic innovation tools enabling nautical stakeholders to shape a next level port

The current study explores how strategic design can foster innovation within the nautical process. With a focus on creating and learning by doing, strategic design can generate value among the nautical stakeholders. The nautical (operational) process has been explored in detail and translated into boundary objects to facilitate and foster...

Hack The Government!: Empowering Citizens to Make Meaningful Use of Open Data

Citizens’ use of Open Data is often limited to the use of apps. The design of the (app based) public service as well as the interpretation of the data is done for them. The organization of local hackathons can promote citizens’ data literacy and better use of available<br/>Open Data for service transformation purposes. This promises to nicely...

Urban symbiosis: A new paradigm in the shift towards post-carbon cities

The metabolic flows of cities have to be reduced. Thus far, efforts have been mainly directed to providing the city with renewable resources, diminish resource consumption, and/or reuse the wastes and emissions. The dense fabric of urban infrastructures does not only provide a high level of services. By the proximity of infrastructures symbiosis...