On November 30th the Italian OD&M course “Design Driven Strategies” began. The course is organized by the faculty of Architecture and Design University of Florence together with CSM – Centro Sperimentale del Mobile – a consortium association of companies operating in the furniture sector – and LAMA Agency, a consulting company and founder of the social innovation coworking space “Impact Hub” in Florence.

We interviewed the Professor of Design for Sustainability, Giuseppe Lotti and the expert of European projects of LAMA Laura Martelloni, to better understand the opportunities offered by the course, and its innovative features.

The word “Design” is now popular, but its meaning can vary greatly depending on its application: what is meant by “Design Driven Strategies”?

GL: The competitiveness of companies and territories depends on the ability to define innovative strategies. These can be guided by design, which can be considered as a discipline to foreshadow the future, to perform the function of synthesis and catalysis of interdisciplinary contributions, making innovation immediately expendable.

LM: The thought behind this course is to recognize that those who now design products, services, experiences, does it within an increasingly complex, in an interconnected and uncertain system. A need for a new set of knowledge and skills therefore arises, as well as a need for new learning environments, able to go beyond training ‘in silos’. With this course we move towards systemic skills and competences, useful to work in complexity, recognizing that complexity needs to be analysed from different points of view. The designer of the 21^st century will increasingly make use of a mix of “hard” and “soft” skills: therefore, we want to train designers able to involve different disciplines and communities, to find new answers within a context that changes rapidly, continually forcing us to change models and frameworks. In other words, the economic and social transformations encourage us to think designers as professionals who help to create hybrids between products, experiences and services.

The course is organized around innovative teaching methods: can you describe them?

GL: The course is the work of several actors, with different approaches, methods and tools. The methodological rigour and the importance of theoretical-critical contributions are typical of the university; the experimental approach from the makers and practitioners’ communities is LAMA’s added value; the challenges of companies from CSM brings concreteness, applications and impact.

LM: The training method has three main characteristics: it is experiential, distributed, collaborative.

“Experiential” means that we rely on real challenges around which students will experience a learning experience. We would like to try to challenge the traditional culture of ‘learning outcomes’ and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), to focus instead on the process as an experience of open learning, not necessarily predefined. In the course, through moments of peer review, students will understand what they are learning, considering the plurality of contexts in which they learn as the guiding principle of evaluation. Self-evaluation, peer evaluation and more traditional evaluation will all play an important role.

“Distributed” regards the decentralization of the method. Students will learn not only with traditional lessons, but especially through the experiences they will have and the people they will be in contact with during the whole process. We want to stimulate students to deepen the contents both in team and independently. We will use principles and approaches of communities of practice, stimulating the creation of a community of learners, operating with self-regulation and self-organization dynamics.

“Collaborative” means that all the work is done in a team, and that the ultimate goal is to build fluid communities of practice, that collaborate, experiment and learn.

Finally, I would like to underline how the recognition of skills is also achieved through an innovative method that will allow the construction of digital portfolios, able to read the entire hard and soft set of skills acquired through the learning path.

What is the added value of organizing a training course that takes place not only in university classrooms? And what are the challenges related to this approach?

GL: We are talking about design-driven innovation and research projects. Design, by its nature, is not a discipline that works only in university classrooms but has an innate ability to get your hands on, as defined above.

LM: Uniting Impact Hub Florence, the University of Florence and an ecosystem of local businesses is an opportunity for students to reconnect meanings and actions that we often live discontinuously and fragmented. It is an attempt to link formal, non-formal and informal learning contexts in a single sense framework, understanding how each of these contexts can bring value into a training experience.

The course is organized within the European Erasmus + program, Knowledge Alliances. What are the motivations and added value of working in parallel with other universities (in London, Bilbao Dabrowa Gornicza,)?

GL: The first added value is certainly represented by the possibility of comparing different production and research entities. This stimulates the development of good practices and the overall growth of our respective educational systems.

LM: The motivations are many: listening, exchanging practices, learning how others do things.

The project itself is a gym for us to work in complexity: when you work simultaneously with four countries, ten partners, the related teams, made up of people who perform very different functions, you are part of a great gear. From this point of view, I believe that programs like Erasmus have a great added value not only in supporting the innovation of training – today an urgent need in the face of the great transformations of the fourth industrial revolution – but also in bringing Europe closer.

Finally, who do you think are the right people to take part in the course? And for what reasons?

GL: The right people are first of all curious people! “If you are not curious, forget it”. Achille Castiglioni.

LM: The course addressed to anyone who has to do with the design of products and services, taking care of their social and environmental consequences. Personally, I hope that this will include also designers in the social sphere. I believe that in these areas the opportunities from the point of view of knowledge and skills are still untapped. The course could also be an opportunity for third sector designers to try to radically change the way they look at the design of their services.

The training brochure (in Italian) can be found here. A more detailed description can be found here.

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Excerpt

From the Introduction:

1. “In the past years we have assisted to the rapid spread of what is now commonly called the “sharing economy” in various sectors, adopting different forms frequently based on the use of the Internet and digital platforms. Looking at the underlying discourses of the sharing economy (collaboration, solidarity, sharing), we find many elements in common with the vision and experience of the cooperatives. Because of these common elements, but also challenging that narrative on the field of governance and democracy, cooperatives themselves are becoming interested in the phenomenon and are trying to understand which forms of convergence they can develop.

Moving from a recent pioneer experience of research conducted in Italy, LAMA Agency and Cooperatives Europe expanded and explored the perspective and experiences on the sharing economy of cooperatives at European level. The research explored the level of awareness, the interest, practical cases, opportunities and barriers of the cooperatives approaching the sharing economy topic. The two organizations interviewed the representatives of national cooperative associations in 9 different EU member states and launched an online mapping survey collecting 38 sounding empirical cases from 11 European countries, plus 3 initiatives from outside the EU. The study demonstrates that cooperatives can contribute to the collaborative economy promoting models of community based on membership rather than usership, supporting new initiatives to manage the commons, but also getting the business model transformation opportunities enabled by digital platforms and internet technologies. The paper provides also suggestions for further research and work at EU level.”

2. “The interviews addressed 5 broad research questions:

i. What is the understanding of the collaborative economy on the part of the national cooperative movements, and their general attitudes towards this emerging phenomenon?

ii. What are the levels of awareness and knowledge of the collaborative economy among individual cooperatives at the ground level, and their degree of interest in terms of innovation potential?

iii. What is the actual spread of innovative practices among the cooperatives? What key sectors and types of cooperative innovations are directly or indirectly being inspired by the collaborative economy?

iv. What is the role of cooperative umbrella associations, in terms of promoting awareness, debate, and experimentation?

v. What are the key challenges, opportunities, and future paths for cooperatives in the collaborative economy field?”

From the Conclusions:

“Conclusions and implications for future research and policy This exploratory research intended to propose a new perspective on the relationship between the cooperatives and the collaborative economy in Europe, by gathering the perceptions and opinions of representatives of the cooperative movement in different countries, and by collecting some initial evidence of how cooperatives on the ground are actually engaging with collaborative economy innovations. The final aim of this reflection is to identify any potential opportunities and challenges deriving from the application and adaptation of collaborative economy models in cooperatives, and from the development of new “collaborative practices” from within the cooperative movement. The conclusions that we present here are based on the first ideas collected from our interviewees and review of empirical cases. They are not to be considered as official positions of Cooperatives Europe nor of the cooperative associations involved. Nor they are to be considered as the arrival point of a research process that has just started. The suggestions we present will necessarily need to be analysed more in detail, and supported by sound research to be assesswd for their actual feasibility and desirability in practice; nonetheless, we believe they can provide a first interesting stimulus on this topic for the European research and policy community.

Overall, the considerations raised by this study suggest that cooperatives may potentially benefit from engaging with the collaborative economy phenomenon. In particular, by exploring its innovation potential, it was suggested that cooperatives may discover new interesting ways to update and transform some of their established features, to better fit the emerging developments at societal, market, and technological level.

As some cooperative leaders highlighted in this research, cooperatives would first of all benefit from a deeper understanding and reflection on the collaborative economy topic. In general terms, it seems important that cooperatives approach this topic soon, and in an open and proactive way. It was highlighted that cooperatives should look at the positive potential of the collaborative economy phenomenon, and not fear it the even when it leads to the emergence of new, global competitors that use a “collaborative” language mainly for commercial purposes. Cooperatives have internal histories and resources which might allow them to build alternative models challenging such competitors, developing their new distinctive solutions that are in line with cooperative principles and fundamental values.

The cooperative movement, it was observed, has demonstrated the capacity to combine economic growth and impact with the capacity to promote significant forms of empowerment, participation, and social interconnectedness. These are an important asset in the collaborative economy model, and if cooperatives are able to valorise them also in digital ways, they may become their distinctive added value into this emerging movement. Cooperatives can indeed contribute to the collaborative economy with a new (new for the collaborative economy, not for cooperatives) idea of community that is based on membership rather than usership. Moreover, by valorising their widespread presence across Europe and beyond, it was suggested that cooperatives might also use the collaborative economy model to build large interconnected networks across the territories that challenge the collaborative economy incumbents.

Another area of opportunity and idea which emerged from the research is that cooperatives might also benefit from exploring more and deeper the potential of new concepts such as “collaborative production”, “collaborative learning and knowledge”, and new fields of development such as the area of the commons, where they can play an important role and contribute to sustainable social and economic development.

However, this preliminary study suggests also that a cooperative movement willing to fully invest the collaborative economy potentials may be confronted to a number challenges, for example:

• to raise awareness of the collaborative economy models and features and to understand the reasons and structural basic conditions for its success;
• to encourage existing cooperatives to exploit the potential of digital and web technologies to update and upgrade their internal participation patterns;
• to support the development of new cooperatives setting up financial, technical and strategic support schemes at national and EU level;
• to set up relevant frameworks to pilot solutions, evaluate results and replicate successes fostering at the same time an open and distributed discussion aimed at balancing the presence of the sole “capitalist-based collaborative economy” narrative.

The relevance of the opportunities that seem to emerge from this initial scoping of the topic, and the complexity of the challenges that accompany them, suggest that more research is needed in this area, to better understand emerging dynamics and possible ways forward.

At the same time, this study suggests that there would also be room to stimulate the EU at institutional level, to consider the possible role of the cooperative legal form into peer-to-peer commercial markets. Cooperatives can match democracy, transparency, local and global impact, employment regulation, consumer safety and redistribution “by form”, with the power of a digital, user friendly, attractive and effective environment typical of the collaborative economy business models. Moreover, from governance to learning platforms, and considering the wide world of noncommercial sharing activities in many way based on – or fostered by – digital social platforms, an even bigger space of opportunities could be opened up by looking at the possible contribution of cooperatives.

Lastly, the promotion of a collaborative-cooperative economy, deeply enrooted in local territories and combining economic opportunities with social and democratic values, may possibly represent also a valuable path for the EU institutions to strengthen reputation among citizens, and to effectively pursue the objective of a smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth, ultimately improving wellbeing, social cohesion and security in Europe.”

Find the full study here.

Photo by Burke Museum

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“Cooperatives Europe, in collaboration with LAMA Development and Cooperation Agency, released today a new publication, titled ‘Cooperative Platforms in a European Landscape: An Exploratory Study’, at the International Social Innovation Research Conference in Glasgow.

The first known European exploratory study of its kind provides an overview of established cooperatives already developing innovations in the collaborative economy field and reveals the results of the online mapping study, analysing 38 cases from 11 European countries and 3 initiatives from outside the EU. In addition, the publication explores the interest, awareness, practical cases, opportunities and challenges faced, through a series of interviews conducted with cooperative associations from 9 EU Member States.

The study demonstrates that cooperatives can contribute to the collaborative economy promoting models of community based on membership rather than usership, supporting new initiatives to manage the commons, but also getting the business model transformation opportunities enabled by digital platforms and internet technologies.

The online mapping is considered only as the first step in building a comprehensive understanding of the cooperative landscape involving collaborative economy, aiming to continue the study and reach more cooperatives in the future in the EU and beyond.

Agnès Mathis, Director of Cooperatives Europe, commented: ‘Cooperatives and collaborative economy have much in common, yet there is a substantial amount to learn from each other as shown by initiatives carried out by cooperatives in the field and by their national associations. The cooperative movement should apprehend the emerging collaborative economy as an opportunity to promote a vision of an economy based on mutualisation of resources and increased democratic participation.’ ”

Publication: Cooperative Platforms in a European Landscape: An Exploratory Study. By Como, Mathis, Tognetti, Rapisardi (available here).

Photo by mahohn

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