SESAM - Centre for social entrepreneurship and collaborative social innovation

Tools for collaborative social innovation

Here you will find models and tools which are developed and tested in concrete cases, so that it becomes easier for municipalities and other actors to begin, and execute collaborative social innovation.

SAMSON

Scientists found that most of the Norwegian cases had a low level of maturity. Collaborative social innovation is hard to accomplish in practice. The project showed that the general level of knowledge when it came to collaborative social innovation was low, and that the municipalities struggled to achieve true user involvement in the cases.

By combining theory and experience from the cases, there has been developed a model for local collaborative social innovation. This model has been used to create a digital processing tool for collaborative social innovation, and gives you a picture of where the collaboration stands, and which fields of action you have to work on to achieve real collaborative social innovation.

This tool makes it possible to adjust course during the process, as well as evaluate the process in hindsight, in light of both values and fields of action - what are we doing well, where do we have challenges, how did we correct things during the process, or where did we fail. The model is based on that collaborative social innovation is relational and contextual, and that positions and roles always need to be transparent in order to being handled adequately. This tool must be used by all involved participants together, and will therefore ensure a high level of equality and openness during the process.

SAMSON (in Norwegian)

SoImpact

Innovation work through collaborative social innovation assumes using different methods for collecting and evaluating results, both regarding values created during the process, and the effect that is a result of the ended process. Measuring effects is demanding, since the causality between effort and effect often is unclear. However, it is important to know whether the resources which are used leads to expected social results and effects.

SoImpact deals with this matter. This tool was first created by SoCentral, and has been further developed during this project. It differs from other methods of measuring effects of social innovation since this tool mainly focuses on measuring results and effects of effort, where the level of causality is high. Soimpact is a tool for choosing and identifying indicators, measuring results and effects caused by the effort put into collaborative social innovation. This tool is a ten-step-process that structures the work, from early definitions of goals, to identifying indicators which can be used for evaluation and analysis.

SoImpact (in Norwegian)

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