Learning for Change: Are we all Ali Baba’s? If opportunity knocks, build a door.
How to balance different actor’s initiatives and interests in a social innovation? How to support a social innovation through transboundary collaboration? This session enables participants to explore these questions through a role play.
The session was conducted in a role play model. The audience were asked to participate in a real social innovation project which is currently going on in Utrecht. The project named De nieuwe is a local centre run by citizens to organize activities for the elderly in the neighborhood. Each of the participant was assigned to a role from researcher, city administration, business owner of the centre and professional healthcare and welfare organization. There were two rounds of discussion held and all the participants work together toward a solution to get this social innovation sustainable funding. Here are several take-aways:
Utilize the function of different role: The hybrid nature of this and many other social innovation models implies that it is possible to get ideas and supports from different perspectives. So, utilize the resources from the different actors in the project will help it to access more alternative solutions and increase the chance of its success.
Balance the interests: At the reverse side of the coin, multi actor means that the project need to balance the different initiatives of all the relevant party and ensure that all their interests are put into context. This requires the participants to aware the position and condition of other actors. The business model they come up with should suit the demand for all parties.
Set short-term and long-term goals: Each actor in the project may have different speed to react. Therefore, it is more optimal to set a short-term goal which is easy to achieve and explore the long-term sustainable ecosystem along the way.
With the enlightened discussion and reflections during and after role play, the session showed that transboundary collaboration can well support social innovation and thus further build capacities for urban sustainable transitions.
