How can co-creation help to address the contemporary societal challenges by increasing public participation in the development of social and technological innovations? How can co-creation help to ensure that the benefits of new social and technological innovations serve all Europeans equally? And what can policymakers do to promote and scale-up co-creation in Europe responsibly? To answer these questions, the SCALINGS team has condensed 3 years of qualitative social science research in 11 European countries into the newly released SCALINGS policy roadmap: “Co-creating European Futures – Innovation, Participation and Co-creation in Europe 2030”.
The roadmap is designed to help orient co-creation actors towards more responsible, socially just and inclusive forms of innovation. Instead of prescribing what co-creation must look like in order to achieve successful and diverse participation in innovation activities, the roadmap offers a set of criteria formulated as assessment questions that empower co-creation actors to design co-creation activities that will work in their specific context. This “Social Impact Assessment for Socially Inclusive and Responsible Co-creation” can be used by a diverse audience of co-creation actors to provide policy frameworks for socially inclusive and responsible co-creation (policymakers), to support and evaluate applicants in the design of co-creation activities (funders), to guide the design and implementation of co-creation activities (co-creation practitioners) and to evaluate their own participation in innovation processes (members of the public). As a second part of the roadmap, the Social Impact Assessment is complemented with an explorative analysis of key legal aspects that practitioners of co-creation must consider. Co-creation challenges existing legal frameworks in multiple ways by inviting the public into innovation activities that usually happen behind closed doors. Where the law complicates co-creation or even conflicts with it, the roadmap provides concrete recommendations to different stakeholders in the EU.
The roadmap was co-authored by Ruth Müller (TU Munich), Anja K. Ruess (TU Munich), Iris Eisenberger (Uni Graz), Thomas Buocz (Uni Graz), Dragana Damjanovic (TU Vienna), Annemarie Hofer (Uni Graz) & Arzu Sedef (TU Vienna) and is available as a document-based version as well as an interactive online format. Download the document here or start your interactive co-creation journey now!