Citizens and civil servants and politicians as well as entrepreneurs, academics and activists are all human beings!
This unsurprising knowledge is largely ignored by most projects, strategies and operational programmes. However in the Boosting Social Innovation network we emphasize that without building, reinforcing and understanding the importance of human relations nothing can be achieved. Within the network it was only when the participants got to know each other that they started to really interact, to exchange and to work on a priori trust. The analysis of their structures shows that this aspect of co-construction and co-decision is central to the success of cities going forward and has a slowing down effect where it does not exist. This was strongly emphasised by the work done on the quality of relations through the sense mapping process.
In the ten partner cities there are many spaces dedicated to start-ups. Only in one of these spaces is there room for public servants. They need creativity as much as anyone in the private sector and these internal social innovations can really improve the way they work, think and succeed. These examples may seem unattainable to many, but they are full of surprises, as creativity and experimentation is not something which is simple to have and can almost not be bought; but it allows "institutional entrepreneurs", as some call them, to develop social innovation within and around city halls as is shown in Turin’s new transfer network on this subject.
Managing social innovation in municipal structures requires spreading to all departments and has to irradiate all levels of the decision making processes. This will empower those civil servants who are closest to the inhabitants, to experiment and allow them to fail in certain circumstances. This acceptance of failure should be worked out whilst identifying and sharing a theory of change, which has to include the idea that an innovation can be very original, but may not work, is not accepted or may cause too much disruption in other sectors.

A local authority was often the decider on many questions, based on the representative democracy that we all know and cherish. But we also know, that sometimes, well thought through decisions are refused by citizens, because of a lack of co-construction, co-ownership. In other words a lack of respect for their opinions. In Boosting Social Innovation we have been inspired by the "Quadruple helix", which invites us to share the development of our territories not only between the private and public sectors and with the knowledge sector but also with citizens, not as experimental testers of policy, but as co-authors and sometimes inventors of solutions.



The knowledge sector can help a lot, bringing in the importance of design, market analysis, which should permit an easier decision making process. As states Manzini, the citizens are making the city from inside themselves.

The new role for public institutions, and especially local authorities fits in well to that of a broker. Each person, each department, the city hall as an administration and its partners have to move from a secure traditional ruling role, to a more convivial, uncertain, smaller comfort zone of a broker, who deals out the cards to different stakeholders, creating the potential for them to be coherent and to work together for the common good, creating commons and wellbeing in the community.

If a public institution wants to develop social innovation, it has to act as a booster. This implies, on the basis of the experience of the network, creating spaces accessible to new projects as in Paris, cross fertilising experiences and ideas as in Gdansk, creating ecosystems and then adapting them to the evolving situation of Turin or influencing mainstream policy through such experimentations as civic crowdfunding in Milan. The process of boosting social innovation was very varied in the network's cities; some were very refined, others were just being created and in some cases it was just the beginning. Every city can start this process.

Many EU documents make reference to evaluation, impact measurement etc. In reality many cities do not have the real capacities to measure what they do and they continue to take decisions on the basis of impressions, political impulse or intuition. This network of large and medium sized cities thinks, that it is time to be able to base decisions on evidence. This process, accompanied by the specialist of impact from the UNDP SDG Impact Finance (UNSIF) Karl Richter, has evolved from impact measurement to impact management, putting the emphasis on knowing what we want to measure and on the process of decision making, which is a consequence of this knowledge.

The Boosting Social Innovation cities think that social innovation is growing into a social revolution, based on the most positive aspect of human beings. Appreciating this and engaging it for the common good is the challenge the cities gave each other in Paris by signing the co-constructed "Call for action". We hope as cities that you will join us in this new exploration of the human kind, the 4th Industrial Revolution.

How to start?

All communities face smaller and bigger social challenges, depending of where we live. Boosting social innovation is not the monopoly of city administrations, as many stakeholders (the private sector, the knowledge sector and citizens) can do it as well. The social innovation approach is based on the idea that one actor (e.g. a municipality) is unable to perform all the roles, which are necessary to address the challenges. It is impossible to take responsibility for naming the challenge, finding and funding the solution, finally testing and scaling it. It is much more feasible to make a change if the different stakeholders share their assets. The experience of the Boostinno network has shown that local authorities have a key role to play in creating the right conditions for the internal development of the city, by stimulating social innovation. We hope that these questions and answers will help you to start, or to improve what is happening in your city: to become a booster...

These almost existential questions can be directly related to the positive development of social innovation. If "nothing happens in my city", if " there are no initiatives taken" then perhaps the right exchange has not taken place between the city and its citizens. Citizens are full of initiatives and want to participate. However very often after years of a lack of a "communication platform" of some sort, they stop believing that they can do anything, or that what they say will have any effect. Indeed especially in more difficult areas of cities, inhabitants have "given up" or are so negative, that they get on with their own lives and forget about the common interests.
If I want to know what the potential of citizens in my city is, I have to create appropriate conditions for dialogue, and I have to guarantee, that some of the ideas that have been put forward, will be at least experimented, with the active participation of the idea givers. For this I have to develop ways of exchanging with the inhabitants, through persons who have this competence.

Hearing of social innovation is perhaps not enough. The first step would be to visit another town or city, where social innovation is more active. Sometimes creativity and citizens' activism is not called social innovation, so the way in which the subject is approached needs to be very incisive.

In my city, working together with my teams, I have to find out where some initiatives are forthcoming and find out how the city can foster them, support them or even finance them, whilst maintaining the activists (social innovators) in their role and not transforming everything into the success of the city authorities. This requires a fundamental change in the governance paradigm: the city is not the rower, but steers the city in a new direction. So the mayor and the city team have to be clever helmsman and woman, have to find out how to navigate and how to work together with the initiatives coming from the citizens.

In fact, the city becomes the broker, deals out the cards in a new way and links what was earlier top down and bottom up initiatives into powerful movements, which create the city from inside and give it the institutional support which is needed.

Social innovation implies, by its nature, the risk of failure. As is well known public institutions "cannot fail" as the press and social media are immediately merciless in their approach. So to start in a safer way there can be a process of analysis to see which innovation is safer: does it require new local or national laws, does it correspond to the reality of the city, is it easy to accomplish, or very difficult? Starting and making the dynamism of social innovation grow may mean doing something "under the radar" in order to "collect low hanging fruit". That will empower the city and it's partners to be able to take more risks next time.

Social innovation cannot start everywhere in the city administration. Some choices have to be made and here it is the wise navigation and knowledge of the city departments which becomes crucial. Which departments are the most capable of managing risk? Which ones are capable, very quickly of accepting and even promoting change? Which director has a trustful relationship with me, where together we can try to foster social innovation? These questions, and maybe many others have to become part of the decision making process, which later will also include those persons and departments which have the highest potential of communicating successes, because after all social innovations succeed very often.

It appears obvious, that ordering social innovation from a hierarchical position does not appear logical. Therefore inciting and fostering the right approach becomes the rule.

The governance paradigm comes into play once more. The previous relations based on authority and dispositions have to evolve towards trust and co-construction, not only within the city administration, but most of all with other outside stakeholders, who are, after all, local inhabitants. This trust cannot be bought. It has to slowly grow, through concrete signs and symbols that it exists. This is perhaps facilitated by choosing one person or department, with whom I feel a strong empathy, where there is a lot of trust, and where logically my collaborators will tell me the real story and not just what I want to hear.

This should allow me, with time, to try to facilitate things for the social innovations, by influencing other key departments and persons, with whom I may not have the same relationship, but who have to listen to my opinions or orders…

The risks are important. Experimenting seems to be a term close to physics or chemistry, where in a contained situation an experiment is conducted. How does that fit into the real world where the experimentation is visible, concerns real people and has given effects? So social innovation has to be well prepared, has to be done on the basis of trust and confidence, which are not the same elements as financing and signing agreements. So the governance paradigm again has to play its role, as the city, or the mayor, has to become one of the members of the local community that co-constructs the social innovation and takes a part of the co-responsibility. On that basis the success will be shared … and so should an eventual failure.

A new company is born, creating tools to improve the daily life of persons with particular illnesses, a way of working of the city administration is largely improved by initiatives coming from civil servants, a group of associations takes on a collective initiative and comes up with concrete propositions that the city has agreed a priori to implement. These are all positive social innovations and it is in the interest of all the stakeholders to communicate on the successes, through the press, social media, etc.

However some sceptics will always remain unconvinced. Therefore it is necessary to implement some kind of evaluation, or impact measurement. In the case of a positive social innovation it may become important to measure its impact, in order to be able to scale it up by investing much more public money in the initiative. This requires, not only having a priori a theory of change already discussed in the city, but also agreement on what we measure, from what point of view and why. Measuring must serve decision making. It can be done from a micro, mezzo or macro level, but the results have to be shared. The intensity of the measure must also be collectively established.

The concepts of co-construction, co-development, co-management are key. Social innovations often concern stakeholders from different areas of life in a city, or even from different cities. Such groups are often described as ecosystems. An ecosystem cannot be created by force. It creates itself, breeding upon the empathy and trust mentioned earlier. As claims prof. Manzini, it is not one ecosystem which makes the difference, but a whole lot of ecosystems, which have a tendency to be "messy" but which create the appropriate climate for successful social innovation. He adds, that it is the responsibility of the city authorities to facilitate and foster the existence of these ecosystems.

Within the ecosystems, the position of the local authority can evolve. At the beginning it should be facilitating and maybe leading, but after a time, it should become just one of the stakeholders of the ecosystems, allowing them to progress and innovate. As soon as the ecosystems become “governable” they lose in creativity and start to be less interesting for the development of the whole city.

Fostering and facilitating the coming into existence of ecosystems requires space: mental and virtual, but also physical. Spaces, managed in very subtle ways are key to fostering social innovations. They have to be open, they should be co-managed, they should include spaces for very different things (from Fab Labs to laboratories, to spaces for dreaming and sleeping) and should be capable of welcoming everyone, even civil servants, who after all are also very creative persons. These spaces can be of very different natures and statutes but together they constitute the "hard" core of the ecosystems of a city. To start it may be very motivating to reflect on temporary spaces, which can be arranged collectively, and which, after a time, will be bought or developed, allowing the creative space to go elsewhere in the city...

Social innovation ecosystems do not require management, but need safe havens, require specific collaborations, need timelines which are rapid and agile and deal in what is generally called "tailor made" conditions, requirements and needs. Therefore yes, the existence of such ecosystems will require strong implementation of the new governance paradigm: light touch governance, co-construction, empathy and true partnership. This may seem an evidence for some and appear unattainable for others. But the Boosting Social Innovation network cities have shown that it is possible.

Real exchange is hard to achieve: need for brokerage

The whole innovation discourse is teaching us that we have to think and operate differently on all levels. Lessons learned from the Boostinno project confirm the theoretical assumption that collaboration is the pillar of the societal order, which is the only way to deal with the complex challenges we are facing now.

The second step of collaboration is actual exchange - of ideas, assets, commodities, ways of thinking. And at the top of that we have sharing.





Local authorities are confronted today with such phenomenon as "big data", "big picture", urban activists, ecological defenders of all changes, lack of finance. Inhabitants are faced with ununderstandable institutional language, decisions they don't understand and a feeling that they have no influence on anything. This vision appears to be even stronger in the so-called regeneration areas, often ”forgotten” by the city authorities.

This strong tension can be resumed by the lack of connection between the top down and the bottom up approaches, The Boosting Social Innovation network has identified, with the help of the SIAC Network the idea of brokerage. Some cities have found in this idea a new way, level and methodology of building real exchange between city authorities and citizens. Indeed "city and citizens" together with the "governance and policy making" themes constituted part of the backbone of the Boostinno network.

In short the brokerage function changes the relationship between city authorities and their citizens, by changing the way in which they collaborate. As indicates prof. Manzini, it is the citizens who are for a large part building the cities from the inside. This is confirmed by the way in which municipalities are trying to reach communities in more difficult areas of their cities. This is also based on the conviction that no city can develop well leaving behind part of its population, which in some cities has really lost contact with the rest.

If the brokerage function develops to become the basis for intensive collaboration between the city and it's citizens suddenly sharing, co-decision making, co-living values, short production circuits, social and solidarity economy or circular economy become the subject of the day, as they are really what citizens are concerned by, but may need more leverage and understanding from the city government, to be able to activate their ideas and actions.

In this sense brokerage becomes sensemaking, stimulating the sharing of values, commodities and assets. At the same time brokerage gives a new dimension to the relationship building question as the process of building relations and knowing who is working on what and what added value this can give is central to good governance and of course the impact measurement and management of local, regional or even national and EU policies. What can brokerage mean on the daily basis?

• habitat of shared experiences – openness for inviting people from different social classes, backgrounds and professions to think and act together (co-creation of policies),
• mediation or mediator which/who enables connections, understanding and collaborations, e.g. joint workshop for people from different sectors where they can freely explain their perspective,
• trying to link people, institutions, organisations and groups of citizens who can be useful for each other,
• sharing your data, knowledge, challenges and questions - being open for engagement of those whom you never work with,
• taking care of constant communication
• translation of different approaches, worldviews and practices to enable balanced collaboration
• fostering connections which enable real change and actions (integrated urban development management)
• sharing of responsibilities and wellbeing.

Examples:
Gdansk: the Integrated Action Plan was conceived, designed and created by a group of local innovators, coming from the city administration, NGO's, the private sector and the knowledge sector. A "broker" was brought in to help make sense of the work of the group and to propose a final version, which the group sifted through and accepted.
Baia Mare: the project coordinator found himself managing several local groups after the visit of the lead expert. This produced unplanned energies and allowed the new relationships between the city authorities and the citizens to flourish, creating a very innovative brokerage relationship.

Practicalities:
Being a broker, for a civil servant, a politician, a city administration implies a new form of governance, new profiles for civil servants and the capacity and will to build up new forms of relations. For the Boosting Social Innovation network cities this means, that co-creation is the only way of policy making, management should be based on integrated urban development, policy implementation should be based on partnerships and partenerial relations, which come out of networking and process facilitation. Only such functioning will empower citizens, who become creative empathetic partners, and permits the creation of added values.




The roles and competences of civil servants and even politicians are quite different from the traditional ones, and this implies a lot of changes in the internal management of cities, as more and more of our collaborators have to be “out of the office”. This gives specific content to the new “social innovation paradigm” where relations are based on trust and respect, people function on the equal partner footing, each civil servant tries to approach her/his partner with an individual approach and networking stands as the basis for success, as it will oblige the municipal systems to work across silos, in an integrated, inclusive and open fashion.

The only question which we have to ask ourselves is “are we ready”? WE that means city authorities, citizens, entrepreneurs, academics, civic organisations, NGO’s, city movements, informal groups. Are WE ready to share responsibilities and wellness, are we ready to work for the common good, are we really ready to be truly innovative?

How we should think about the city to help it effectively face its challenges and develop smart usage of its assets? Which metaphor can embrace all the complexity we are coming across while thinking about introducing change? Which notion can support us in navigating between all those informations, theories, good practices and recommendations?

Cities are the result of a collective intelligence allowing different initiatives, groups, businesses and cultural events to co-exist, thereby creating a collaborative city. However these energies[1] need to somehow be linked into the general functioning of a city. Rules and regulations can be produced in a Cartesian fashion, and become a system. However an eco-system does not respect the same rules. It is selfcreating and does not follow a determined path, but rather tries to create new realities, often in social innovation. It may continue or it may stop. It may be more or less creative.

In every city there is more than one eco-system and, as underlines Manzini, the result is ungovernable and messy but is strongly enabling. It is exactly this lack of predictability and the strength of the improvisation and innovation that make eco-systems so important to the cities of today. A city should therefore not try to manage the eco-systems, because as Turin found out, it is better to be one of the members of the eco-systems, than to try to be above them. The creativity of eco-systems appears to increase in proportion to their freedom and autonomy.

Eco-systems can however be supported in different ways: calls for ideas, spaces (Braga Gnration, Gdansk social hub, etc), co-construction methods (Strasbourg – co-construction of social innovation policy, Start up de territoires), participative budgets (Baia Mare). It is really the brokerage role of the local authority which here comes into force, as the mediator and host of the city, who invites the citizens to fill out the real meaning and content of the city.

Obviously not everything can come from the inhabitants, but many complicated situations can be alleviated, through a strong brokerage role, especially if it is shared between civil servants and politicians, as well as other partners of the city. This is even more so in difficult areas, where for numerous reasons the role of the city administration has diminished to almost nothing. Notwithstanding it would appear that many cities such as Barcelona or Milan are working on a return to these areas in need of regeneration, and are using local mediators, local municipal offices and other means to get closer to the inhabitant and build up the capacity for dialogue. This in turn allows the city to pursue more innovative policies in areas such as urban mobility or the circular economy, which cannot achieve success without the participation of the local population.

In short the main makers of a city are it's citizens, who organize themselves in various ways. It is therefore the responsibility of the city to enable these self creating eco-systems to exist and thrive. As we have seen they cannot "be organised" as they are too complex and their development cannot be foreseen. However producing virtual and real spaces for them is vital. Measuring their social and financial impact is the next collective challenge, which we are all facing.

[1] It is almost surprising that in none of the network cities was there a "department of energy" (the human one) which underlines the importance of the human touch, which is taken so much for granted, but is hardly managed at all.

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Co-visualizing the in-between

Social innovation is about addressing very complex "wicked" problems, in which actors from across many sectors - governments, corporations, educational institutes, NGOs, and, of course, citizens - need to work together intensively for a prolonged period of time. In this way, deep lessons learnt can be shared, and collaborations can come to fruition that align and scale efforts beyond the prototype and project level so as to reach truly collective, integrated and systemic impact. To collaborate successfully, participants need to be able to recognise not only the various interests and perspectives of all stakeholders involved, but also to see the evolving "big picture" of the quality of (potential) connections within all that diversity.

Building this shared understanding is already difficult at the level of a city, when people representing different communities can often meet face-to-face. It is even harder at the national, let alone the European level. The core problem is the fragmentation of collaboration that happens when addressing an intricate web of wicked problems. This requires countless participants to work together, often for a very long duration, and on an array of interrelated solutions. This fragmentation is compounded by everything continuously being in flux: the shifting articulations of the problems, the multitude of approaches, the many stakeholders involved as well as resources available, and so on. Thus, fragmentation of collaboration often results in confusion, the reinventing of many wheels, and only suboptimal solutions. Mapping can help reduce this fragmentation.

Maps are powerful visual artefacts to help people navigate complex spaces. We all know location-based maps that help us navigate from A to B. This geographical metaphor has been extended to create online maps of location-based social innovation services and resources, such as the Paris map where we can see the location of hundreds of “actors” within the social and solidarity economy. These location-based maps are good at classifying and positioning elements, but less suited for capturing their network of collaborative relations.

Another type of map is the community network map. These do not start from a geographical metaphor to provide the necessary reference points, but instead use salient commonalities of the community network itself, such as the issues, goals, themes, or the “sharings” that their collaboration is about. Such maps provide joint conceptual beacons that help participants and others to explore and navigate their often very complex collaboration space. Typically, social network analysis maps capture some such relations, but in a formal, analytical way. An example is the analysis of the Torino informal startup network. Using full-fledged community network maps, however, their members can interact with the map and see how their goals, themes, activities, organisations, stakeholders and resources interrelate. Participants can perceive how they themselves are positioned in this collaboration landscape; where they might want to take their contribution from there; and visually anchor their own efforts in the collaborative network. In short, this type of mapping both shows and grows the network of collaborative relations, on which the creativity of social innovation depends.

Our civilisations and planet have in the last few hundred years gone through 3 previous revolutions:

• steam,
• electricity,
• electronics.

Presently there are several analysts and specialists who are upholding that the fourth industrial revolution is here, and it concerns and integrates directly social innovation. This new revolution identifies new paradigms:

• the producer and consumer are no longer separate entities and often become "prosumers",
• the frontiers between the world of work and the rest of our lives have become very fluid, and help this "prosumer" paradigm to develop,
• the eco-systems which are present and the prosumer paradigm necessitate very agile management, both in the private and the public sectors, moving away from the "we decide once and for all" towards permanent creative management,
• the development of social innovations in the private, III sector and in the public one results very often in tailor made products, services and partnerships,
• all this complexity demands forms of "open management" which put pressure especially on public authorities, to be reactive, creative and to be able to adapt to changes as quickly as they come about.

This messy complexity has to be dealt with taking into consideration that the role of the public sphere is more important than ever. Prof. Mazzucato underlines, that the public purpose of governments of every level has to be much more visionary and demanding, than just compensating what the market cannot deliver. Therefore it is up to local governments to create conditions for this social innovation fermentation, knowing that the results will be positive, and having the confidence, that what comes about will be for the benefit of society at large.

To conclude, social innovation as the new revolution strains the older systems of working and governance, but could be an answer in relation to the extremes that European countries are witnessing, as it drives citizens energies differently. It also relates directly to values, moral ones and market ones, bringing them together to try to produce a collective transformative wellbeing.

Many thanks to all the participants of the Boosting Social Innovation network. But as we want every reader to become a participant in building social innovation, we include a list of participants, their email addresses and a word on their competences or special interests, to incite the reader to make contact:


Authors:
Piotr Wołkowinski, lead expert, Boosting Social Innovation, with the support of Aleksandra Gołdys,
Michał Pielechowski, Magdalena Skiba and Monika Chabior and with the collaboration of Fabio Sgaragli, Aldo de Moor and Karl Richter.