Spreading co-creation

Co-creation – as social innovation

We see co-creation as a collaborative activity that reduces power imbalances and aims to enrich and enhance the value in public service offerings. Culturally it implies the shift of the approach to service end-user and beneficiary from a passive client to an active citizen with resources and capabilities to exert impact on service design, delivery and value creation (See Osborne, 2018).

If successfully implemented and sustained in repetitive interactions co-creation may not only bring local service delivery innovations, but also effect a social innovation of a greater scale, a systemic change, by transforming the roles and relationships between service professionals and beneficiaries in addressing unmet social needs (see Sinclair et al, 2018; Evers & Brandsen, 2016).

Spreading or upscaling?

For a more overarching change to be achieved co-creation needs to take place and be sustained on several levels – from service level to a service system level.  A challenge for disseminating co-creation results is that it, similarly to other social innovations, often follows a spiral path (see a picture below based on Mulgan et al. 2007) that never gets beyond piloting efforts, experimenting and prototyping. It has been argued that an innovation needs to be sustained for a longer period of time for its effects to be spread to other contexts or upscaled. When both these efforts are successful it effects a systemic change.

One of the CoSIE project learnings is that sustaining the legacy of co-creation pilots is important step in system change. Also that it is more relevant to talk about ‘spreading’ co-creation insights and learnings instead of ‘upscaling’ of its results, such as a new service models.

To explore the spread of co-creation we suggest the iceberg metaphor (see the picture below). We cannot simply take the top of the iceberg (i.e. the service) and place it elsewhere but instead must take into consideration the bottom i.e. the conditions enabling co-creation. These conditions may vary in particular contexts, yet the findings of the CoSIE project indicate that often a (unique for the context) combination of several key cornerstones is necessary.

Enablers

Regarding the conditions Albury et al. (2018) identifies two types of enablers for spreading or scaling innovation: micro-level strategies and capitalising on system-level conditions. The CoSIE project find following ideas especially relevant for spreading co-creation as social innovation.

For individual innovators who want to pursue the spread what helps is disseminating knowledge of the vehicles or driving forces for innovation rather than lone champion examples, for example:

• Building demand through existing networks and narratives
• Using evidence to build demand
• Balancing fidelity, quality and adaptability

The CoSIE cases provide evidence and food for thought for further reflection on how demand for co-creative methods and service changes may be built by employing networks (Hungary, Italy, Finland, Spain) and narratives (Sweden, Finland). Building evidence and pressure for change through user voices and lived service experiences has been a common theme in CoSIE.

At a service system or organizational level following aspects help to build demand:

• Capitalising on national and local system level priorities
• Using policy and financial levers to kick start momentum, including  demands for commissioning of services
• Using external funders as promoters of new norms

Regarding the priorities of local service systems or organisations, CoSIE pilots provide proof that spreading new co-creative relations requires a new approach to governance among participant organisations, as a key condition. Co-creation and social innovations gain from such management and governance logic that understands public sector organisations and service networks as Human Learning Systems (Lowe et al. 2020). Such systems adopt an iterative, experimental approach to working with people in their attempts to deal with service needs and challenges. This implies creating a learning culture – a ‘positive error culture’ that encourages discussion about mistakes and uncertainties in practice. Service delivery and improvements become an ongoing process of learning. An essential feature is a strive for using service and user related data (all from open statistics to qualitative data) to learn, to instigate reflections and conversations of change rather than to monitor the achievement of some predefined targets (outputs). The Swedish pilot with its focus on the dialogue and change leadership on all levels is a good example.

National funders may also play a role here by commissioning for learning, not particular services – aiming at the funded organizations’ capacity to learn and adopt new thinking and service governance.

Examples:

Culture/systemic  change  takes longer than the lifetime of projects but our pilot cases show strong evidence and that piloting and prototyping may progress, not least with the help received during CoSIE project,  effecting some durable change beyond project lifetime sometimes also on the systemic level.

• Estonia: Social hackathons mainstreamed in Vorumaa county as an official part of the service development strategy. National replication and recognition. Co-creation by social hackathons has been added to the 2019-2022 action plan of implementing the Strategy of Development of Võrumaa County under the topic ‘Smart governance and support of innovation in the welfare sector’. 
• Hungary: A good example of the role of national funders is a new Family Household Program in Hungary. If applicants apply the co-creation model they will receive extra points.
• Finland: City of Helsinki bought the ‘encountering training’ developed from Hackathons (which won a national award) for its youth workers. A national grant has been won to further sustain and upscale the training. The National Association of Municipalities promotes encourages local governments to use the CoSIE pilot trainings prepared for service professionals to learn more about how to encounter and co-create with marginalized youngsters.
• Spain: Valenciactiva to take on running the service  – Co-Crea-te part of the budget next year – also expressed their intention to repeat this type of service in other areas of the city (yet to be confirmed); CO-CREA-TE MANIFESTO.
• Sweden: As part of piloting experiences in disability services Jönköping municipality initiated an overarching support programme to first-line managers as change leaders towards health promoting co-creative services in broader service areas.

Please reflect upon:

How do you imagine a successful spreading of co-creation can take place regarding the co-creation initiatives and their effects from your chosen service pilot to your local and national contexts?

What CoSIE experiences of spreading co-creation inspire you most?

Indicative literature for further reading:

Evers A. & Brandsen, T. (2016). Social innovations as messages: democratic experimentation in local welfare systems. Social innovations in the Urban Context. In Brandsen, T., Cattacin, S., Evers, A., Zimmer, A. (Eds.) Springer.

Lowe , T., French ,M. Hawkins , M., Hassel Greaves, H. & Wilson, R. (2020):New development: Responding to complexity in public services—the human learning systems approach, Public Money & Management, https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2020.1832738

Mulgan with Tucker, S, Ali R and Sanders, B. (2007) Social Innovation: what it is, why it matters, how it can be accelerated. Oxford Said Business School.

Osborne, S.P. (2018). From public service-dominant logic to public service logic: are public service organizations capable of co-production and value co-creation?, Public Management Review, 20 (2), 225-231, https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2017.1350461

Sinclair, S., Mazzei, M., Baglioni  S., Roy M.J. (2018) Social innovation, social enterprise, and local public services: Undertaking transformation? Social Policy Administration 52 (7), 1317–1331. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12389