SCALINGS

Scaling up Co-Creation: Pathways and Challenges for Socially Robust Innovation in Europe

Funding body: European Commission

Within SCALINGS, we carried out cross-country, cross-instrument and cross-technology research on co-creative innovation practices in order to develop a roadmap for co-creation in Europe. In this roadmap, we consider co-creation in the context of some of the most important challenges Europe faces today, such as growing social inequality and the question of how citizens’ social and political participation can be ensured regardless of their socio-economic position.

The roadmap is designed as an interactive web application in order to meet the needs of the different stakeholders.

SCALINGS Roadmap

What does co-creation of innovation mean? How can co-creation be extended – that is, “scaled up” – in a socially robust way? And what can policymakers do to promote responsible innovation in Europe? We address these questions in the Horizon 2020 project “SCALINGS”.

We question “one-size-fits-all” solutions to social challenges. Instead, we seek to promote innovative practices that take into account the social, cultural and regulatory context in which they are embedded.

Co-creation

Co-creation describes the joint creative process of several persons or groups. These may be, for example, companies, universities, policymakers or citizens. A typical “co-creation innovation process” may look as follows: members of a start-up decide to develop an innovative product – such as a 2-line power kite, new LEGO creations or smart-home products. A university then makes resources available that may be used jointly. To optimise the product, end users are also invited to take part in its development.

“Scaling” means a change in size; “scaling up” therefore means that something grows. In relation to co-creation, this means that models that have worked well in one place (e.g. a test track in rural Hungary) are also used elsewhere (e.g. in a large city such as Wrocław).

However, co-creation processes always depend on their specific framework conditions and therefore cannot be enlarged at will. What works in Leoben does not necessarily work in London. Nevertheless, there are certain success factors that successful co-creation processes have in common. SCALINGS seeks to identify these success factors so that co-creation processes also work when they are deployed on a larger scale.

Institutions

The project consists of ten partner institutions from nine European countries. These include, for example, the Technical University of Munich (DE), the Eindhoven University of Technology (NL), the Wroclaw University of Economics and Business (PL) and Imperial College London (UK).

37 experts from different disciplines, such as Science and Technology Studies, anthropology, philosophy and law, are investigating various instruments for co-creation. The focus is on co-creation in the fields of robotics, urban energy generation and supply, and autonomous driving. The interdisciplinary composition of the team allows us to consider complicated problems from different perspectives.

Target groups

SCALINGS addresses citizens, policymakers and businesses.

Citizens are to be given the necessary tools to initiate and implement co-creation processes on their own. We support policymakers in implementing framework conditions for co-creation across the EU by developing a policy roadmap. In addition, we want to enable industry and businesses to benefit from our findings by providing them with a toolkit for successful co-creation.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement 788359.