Possible social impact of co-creation

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What kind of social outcomes or impact can be expected from co-creation?

How may both contributors and beneficiaries concerned be effected by co-creation?

In what ways and to what extend may these outcomes be influenced by the range of actors and users involved in co-creation and their undertaken roles?

To be able to explore the social outcomes of co-creation and its innovative potential it is important to return to our original conceptualisation of co-creation as a particular type of service relationship. From this point of view the power is more equally shared along the service development cycle (co-initiation, design, decision making, implementation and evaluation). The ultimate aimed value is empowering individuals, particularly those that are recipients of social service offerings. The focus thus is not so much on particular outputs, such as type of services or their new routines but rather their impact in terms of perceived changes among the people who are supported by that service.

Further, co-creation may imply additional values for service actors or stakeholders such as reaching consensus on need complexity, shared visions for change and more co-ordinated or collaborative actions overbridging departmental and organisational silos. Sensemaking conversations may be essential for deeper understanding of co-creative relationships as part of service ethics.

Co-creation is a collaborative activity that reduces power imbalances and aims to enrich and enhance the value in public service offerings. Value may be understood in terms of increased well-being and shared visions for the common good that lead to more inclusive policies, strategies, regulatory frameworks or new services.

As a new relational paradigm co-creation may effect changes on micro (or service) level, but also on meso (or service organisation, system or community) and macro (societal) levels.

Among the many factors that affect co-creation we could distinguish 5 major types:

• Governance and leadership (change process support, leadership types)
• Culture and ethics (approaches, languages, roles, relationships)
• Managerial (administrative support, economic steering, staff management strategies)
• Methodological, pedagogical (ICT, Luupi, social media, open data, and community reporting)
• Broader political-historical context (historically established ‘paths’, national policy discourses)