This is a CTP of initiative: DESIS - POLIMI DESIS Lab Italy (Italy)
This CTP is the first project that relates design with social innovation, developed by the Polimi DESIS Lab. In 2004 the Polimi DESIS Lab was called “research unit DIS – Design and Innovation for Sustainability”, based in the Department of Design at the Politecnico di Milano.
The project EMUDE (Emerging Users Demands for Sustainable Solutions) is considered a CTP because it marked the starting point of the future DESIS Network. The Network was founded and developed by members and ex-members of the Polimi DESIS Lab and most of them were involved (or in close contact) with this project.
It is considered a starting point for DESIS Network for the following reasons:
a) The project was focused on the “creative communities, defined as people who are able to act outside the dominant thought and behaviour pattern”. One of the main aims was to identify the characteristics of the solutions developed by these communities: “in the beginning we did not call them (these solutions) social innovations. Later we realized that they were social innovations”. EMUDE was an important (and probably the first step) for design discipline to consider social innovation as an issue for design theory and practices.
b) The projects main aim was to identify the “emerging users demands for sustainable solutions” by collecting case studies of social innovation and, later, by analysing them looking for “new demands for products and services that emerge, and their potential both on the social and environmental side”. This allowed the partners to develop the first steps to understanding the social innovation phenomena from a design point-of-view and based on real cases.
c) The EMUDE project collected case studies on social innovation using a network of schools, called the Antennas Network. It is an observer network (that collected the cases). The network was composed of teams of undergraduates and graduates from a number of design schools, who acted as researchers while simultaneously disseminating findings both inside and outside of their institutions. This was the basis of the future DESIS Network as it is organized today, composed of a network of Labs based on design or design-oriented schools.
Therefore, in synthesis, three major topics were considered in EMUDE:
(1) the nature of the groups of people who generate social innovations (the creative communities);
(2) their role in promoting new and sustainable lifestyles (the promising cases generated by them) and
(3) the possibility of making these promising cases more accessible, effective and replicable, thanks to some appropriate initiatives (the enabling system).
These three topics were further developed by the DESIS Labs. The identification of social innovation cases continues to be a key point in the methodological approach used by DESIS Network members. New activities usually start by identifying cases of social innovation at a local and global level. This was a good starting point for many new DESIS Labs.
The Labs also started to make an effort to develop new social innovations, with the aim of answering the demands and priorities identified at a local level.
The EMUDE project was developed answering a call opened under the FP6 EU Framework Program: FP6 (FP6-2002-NMP-1, FP6-NMP / NMP-2002-3.4.3.3-2). It was a call related to Nanotechnologies, but in one of the paragraphs, the possibility of developing the EMUDE project was identified. The EC covered 100% of the costs.
The project was developed with the following partners, which included research institutes (private and public), universities and design agencies (all working on the communication of the on-going as well as the final results). The communication of the ongoing and final results was considered a key aspect of the EMUDE project, in which one of the main aims was to visualise, communicate and disseminate the social innovation cases and their possible implications by means of technological trends, scenarios and roadmaps.
EMUDE showcased the social innovation cases and scenarios as a way to create awareness among citizens (using clear forms of communication, scenarios and expositions) so that they could be active actors in promoting a transition towards a more sustainable society.
Partners: STATENS INSTITUTT FOR FORBRUKSFORSKNING (Norway); NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK - TNO (Netherlands); STRATEGIC DESIGN SCENARIOS SPRL (Belgium); DOORS OF PERCEPTION B.V. (Netherlands); PHILIPS INTERNATIONAL B.V. (Netherlands); COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES - DIRECTORATE GENERAL JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE (Belgium); CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY, BUDAPEST FOUNDATION (Hungary); CONSUMERS INTERNATIONAL (United Kingdom); UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME.
The importance of communicating social innovation cases and, based on them, developing scenarios for more sustainable lifestyles, was also explored previously in the exhibition, ‘Sustainable Everyday: Scenarios of Urban Living’ which was held at the Triennale di Milano from the 22nd of September to the 21st of December 2003. Linked to the exhibition was an international conference ‘Visions of Possible Worlds: Scenarios and Proposals for Sustainability: A new social role for designers and design schools’ on the 28th of November 2003.
The conference and exhibition were promoted by the Faculty of Design at the INDACO Department of the Politecnico di Milano and the Triennale di Milano with support from the United Nations Environment Programme.
The following events are directly related with the emergence and development of this CTP.
Smaller projects and events were developed before EMUDE, such as the international conference ‘Visions of Possible Worlds: Scenarios and Proposals for Sustainability: A new social role for designers and design schools’ and the exhibition, ‘Sustainable Everyday: Scenarios of Urban Living’, both held in 2003. These two initiatives were developed as a pilot for the EMUDE project: they were based on the same theoretical and operational principles.
Another important event was a call for proposals set up in 2002 by the European Commission. The EMUDE proposal was submitted and approved and this allowed the project to be developed.
After the EMUDE project finished, a second project (CCSL) developed the same approach in “emerging countries”: China, India and Brazil. This was important to diffuse the approach and involved design schools outside Europe, which were connected later to the DESIS Network as Labs.
2002 – Call for proposals under the Sixth Framework Program – European Commission. The EMUDE project was developed answering a call opened under the FP6 EU Framework Program: FP6 (FP6-2002-NMP-1, FP6-NMP / NMP-2002-3.4.3.3-2). It was a call related to Nanotechnologies, but in one of the paragraphs, the possibility of developing the EMUDE project was identified. The EC covered 100% of the costs.
2003 – Conference Visions of Possible Worlds. The theme of the conference was social innovation for sustainability, defined as “a kind of system innovation, where grass-roots behavioral changes are able to re-orientate the socio-technical system in which they took place towards more sustainable patterns”. The conference focused on “the (potential) role of design schools as operators able to act within society, both as antennas to pick up new social demands and emerging life styles, and as catalysts for new ideas of well-being and new, practical solutions”. The conference considered “the role of “shared visions” as drivers of innovation, both as catalysts of processes and events and as facilitators of social conversation about the future”.
2003 – Exhibition Sustainable Everyday: Scenarios of Urban Living. The exhibition presented a panorama of proposals and scenarios on what everyday life could be like in a sustainable metropolis. It dealt with the future of “dwelling”, but it did not focus on new ways in which technology could redefine traditional functions, but rather centred on the new “living strategies” that are emerging, becoming possible and, for some at least, desirable today. These living strategies resulted from social system, rather than from technological innovation. The exhibition presented new visions and possible futures derived from emergent forms of social innovation.
2006 – 2007 Project Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles (CCSL). CCSL was a research project that dealt with creativity and sustainable lifestyles. More precisely, it discussed the potential of collaborative creativity in everyday life(the creative communities) for generating and diffusing new and more sustainable ways of living in the urban environments of emerging countries (with a focus on Brazil, India and China). CCSL compared some European experiences with ones that could be observed in the growing urban populations of emerging countries.
There was no contestation to develop EMUDE.
The biggest challenge was from the design community of theorists and practitioners, which raised doubts about how social innovation could be an object for design research and practice:
“In the early years, we were not sufficiently prepared (to develop the relationship between design and social innovation). We showed people beautiful cases (of social innovation, organized in scenarios), but they were wondering: how could this be related to design?”
The development and consolidation of the DESIS Network was an achievement as it developed the relationship between design and social innovation:
“there was definitely a period in which the goal was to spread the idea, that social innovation was interesting and that design could do something ".
“for the design schools that were starting out on this topic, it (the DESIS network) was a way of providing support. They could say: - We can carry forward the work on design for social innovation because there are other schools doing the same”.
The empirical work in TRANSIT about the DESIS Network and in two local manifestations indicated that teachers (already running or on their way to opening a DESIS Lab) faced difficulties in their departments and universities to develop social innovation as a topic for design theory and practice. Membership to the DESIS Network provided support to overcome local challenges.
The project EMUDE was not understood as a CTP when developed. However, it became clear that the the “connection with the schools in the Antennas Network, developed in the projects EMUDE and CCSL” was important because “when the projects were over, we started a conversation, and instead of being a group aimed at a result we have become a more open network”.
Later, when DESIS started to be developed, it became clear that the network had originated from the ideas and processes that were developed in the EMUDE project.
Many of the DESIS Lab`s activities, particularly those that were initiated at the beginnings of the DESIS Network, started their activities collecting cases of social innovation, developing scenarios based on the cases, communicating the cases, i.e. they had followed the EMUDE methodology and theoretical background as an important starting point. Later, they started to develop new projects and to use new methods to answer new challenges and demands.
The development of the EMUDE project evidenced the importance of working with a network of design schools to promote social innovation and consolidated an initial methodological and theoretical approach based on which design schools were able to start to work with social innovation.
However, it became evident that EMUDE was a starting point to “spread the word” and in which the main aim was to highlight the importance of social innovation and to start to use design skills to communicate this value:
“There was simultaneously a change in both the social and political context and also in our internal organizational context (in the DESIS Network), that were connected to one another. In the social and political context, at a certain point we realized that it was no longer an issue of spreading the idea, because the theme of social innovation had had a boom. Not everyone understood it, but everyone was speaking about it. Also in this process the design for social innovation was developed and got recognition. Therefore, it was no longer a question of circulating the idea for there to be a design for social innovation”.
“However, and here comes the next part of the DESIS network development, we no longer needed to spread the word (about the importance of social innovation) but needed to go into depth and develop a specific design knowledge (sapere progettuale in Italian) about social innovation… Then, at that time, the network had changed from a network of individuals to a network of Labs, which were required to develop research activities and projects. Later, the Labs were organized in “??thematic clusters”, i.e., they started to collaborate to be able to understand and develop projects about specific issues”
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