From the Sharing Economy to the Collaborative Economy: a transition of note for the research community?

Over recent months the concept of the sharing economy has begun to emerge within the discourse of the sustainability transitions research community: a transitions stream has been organised for the First International Workshop on the Sharing Economy; a PhD project focused on business-to-consumer and peer-to-peer models of car sharing has been advertised; and, Frank Geels noted engagement with the sharing economy as evidence of the dynamism of sustainability transitions research (see March 2015 Sustainability Transition Research Network Newsletter).  Perhaps, this interest reflects the growing media profile of, and government engagement with, the sharing economy. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly hard to ignore Airbnb; the Silicon Valley success story, which is so often used to exemplify the nature of the sharing economy.

However, the definition and scope of the sharing economy is much contested, and definitions which reflect the multifarious uses of the concept in practice remain elusive at best (Schor, 2014). Perhaps, the dominate definition has been offered by Botsman (2013), who argues that the sharing economy is an economic model built upon peer-to-peer platforms and “based on sharing, swapping, trading, or renting products and services, enabling access over ownership”. Furthermore, advocates including Botsman and Rogers (2010) argue that the sharing economy possesses the potential to disrupt the practices of hyper-consumption prevalent in market economies, and hence bring major environmental and social benefits. However, the sharing economy has also garnered strong critiques, amongst the most scathing Morozov’s (2013) claim that the sharing economy is a form of “neo-liberalism on steroids”. Such divergent arguments, and a growing profile, make the sharing economy a fertile domain for researchers, and the sustainability transitions research community is not alone in struggling to keep place with developments in practice[1].

Before engaging with sharing economy - to understand sustainability impacts and processes of innovation - as a research community we might benefit from engaging with the latest developments within the niche. Indeed, having done so, I have found that much of the discourse now expands upon the central ideas advocated by Botsman and Rogers (2010) - – i.e. new digitally mediated business models which enable access over ownership. My observations of the Ouishare 2015 Fest[2] – attended by approximately 1000 activists, social innovators, entrepreneurs and innovation intermediaries – suggest that many niche actors are distancing themselves from the concept of the sharing economy (as defined in the narrow terms above). Whilst, within the niche the concept of the collaborative economy has also emerged - and has been the topic of lengthy discussion at the Ouishare Fest - driven by concerns around the unsustainable nature of the prevailing capitalist economic paradigm. OuiShare (2015a), a think and do tank and network of innovators, define the collaborative economy:

“as initiatives based on horizontal networks and participation of a community. It is built on "distributed power and trust within communities as opposed to centralized institutions" (R. Botsman), blurring the lines between producer and consumer. These communities meet and interact on online networks and peer-to-peer platforms, as well as in shared spaces such as fablabs and coworking spaces.”

Similar visions of a broader sharing economy or collaborative economy have also been offered by other niche actors, and actors working at the interface between the niche and the regime (e.g. Nesta (Stokes et al., 2014), a major UK based innovation charity). Such visions share a critique of the centralised structures of the market economy, and herald the potential of, and need for, digital and social innovations which empower citizens to promote sustainability and equality. Hence, the concept of the collaborative economy connects with active research areas, e.g. grassroots innovation (Seyfang and Smith, 2007), and areas which have tended to be overlooked, e.g. digital innovation (with notable exceptions including Smith et al., 2013).

To conclude, I suggest there is a considerable opportunity for the sustainability transitions research community to develop and pursue a sharing economy research agenda that engages with both mainstream and emerging niche visions. In particular, the emerging concept of the collaborative economy is related to, but distinct from, the mainstream understanding of the sharing economy, and is hence also in need of further research. In pursuing such an agenda, a transdisciplinary research orientation might have an important role to play in supporting the formation of a robust sharing (or collaborative) economy niche with the potential to contribute to a wider transition to sustainability.

References

Botsman, R. 2013. The Sharing Economy Lacks a Shared Defintion [Online]. Available: http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/2013/11/22/the-sharing-economy-lacks-a-shared-definition/ [Accessed 8th January 2015].

Botsman, R. & Rogers, R. 2010. What's mine is yours: how collaborative consumption is changing the way we live, London, UK, Collins.

Morozov, E. 2013. The 'sharing economy' undermines workers rights [Online]. Available: http://evgenymorozov.tumblr.com/post/64038831400/the-sharing-economy-undermines-workers-rights [Accessed 8th January 2015].

Ouishare. 2015a. The Collaborative Economy [Online]. Available: http://ouishare.net/en/about/collaborative_economy [Accessed 21st January 2015].

Ouishare. 2015b. Ouishare Fest 2015: Lost in Transition? [Online]. Available: http://2015.ouisharefest.com/ [Accessed 26th May 2015].

Schor, J. 2014. Debating the Sharing Economy. Available: http://greattransition.org/publication/debating-the-sharing-economy [Accessed 19th January 2015].

Seyfang, G. & Smith, A. 2007. Grassroots innovations for sustainable development: Towards a new research and policy agenda. Environmental Politics, 16, 584-603.

Smith, A., Hielscher, S., Dickel, S., Soderberg, J. & Van Oost, E. 2013. Grassroots digital fabrication and makerspaces: reconfiguring, relocating and recalibrating innovation. Available: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=2013-02-swps-aps-sh-gdf-working-paper.pdf&site=25 [Accessed 8th January 2015].

Stokes, K., Clarence, E., Anderson, L. & Rinne, A. 2014. Making Sense of the UK Collaborative Economy. Available: http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/making_sense_of_the_uk_collaborative_economy_14.pdf [Accessed 21st January 2015].

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[1] A search of the Scopus database of academic literature for the term “sharing economy” returns 39 results [22^nd May 2015].

[2] The theme of Ouishare Fest was “Lost in Transition?” which the organiser expanded upon as follows: “Transition, transformation, shift: these are words we hear a lot lately to express how the economy, environment, politics and business are changing. What exactly are we transitioning to? What direction would we like to go in? What could a collaborative society look like?” (Ouishare, 2015b)

Why is it so difficult to define the sharing economy?

I am just starting up a new research project focussing on the sharing economy in the UK, building on my ongoing research on grassroots innovation in collaborative consumption.  One of things has that really caught my interest is the challenge of defining the core terminology (e.g. the sharing economy, the collaborative economy, and collaborative consumption) and how these different terms might fit together. Rather than offer yet another definition or set of definitions, I would like to briefly reflect upon the challenges of constructing a definition of the sharing economy. Having explored a range of definitions offered by both academics and sharing economy advocates I tend to agree with Juliet Schor (2014) that “Coming up with a solid definition of the sharing economy that reflects common usage is nearly impossible”. So why might this be the case?

Well when we talk about the sharing economy we seek to define a multi-faceted (i.e. multi-dimensional) space of social, economic and technological activity. Furthermore, these dimensions are interrelated and are collectively or individually open to critique or contestation from different political stances.

Starting with perhaps the central dimension of the sharing economy – what forms of exchange are considered to be acts of sharing? One might consider sharing by its common sense meaning to exclude forms of exchange where a monetary benefit accrues to one or more party. Or alternatively one might consider monetary benefit to be irrelevant as it is access to an asset which is being shared. There is certainly an incentive to adopt the latter position as entrepreneur or advocate with commercial interests in the sharing economy, due to the positive associations potential customers may have with the term sharing. However, using the term sharing in this way is certainly open to critique as a form of share-washing. For example, those less sympathetic to the logics of the market economy might argue that renting isn’t sharing, it is obviously renting and that fact should not be obscured.

Moving on to considering a second dimension – what things might be shared within the sharing economy? The things being shared might be framed in many different ways including assets, products, services, skills, time, human resources, physical resources, networks or access. Some of these framing are certainly more contentious than others, although most are open to the critique of adopting a rather dehumanising managerial or technological perspective. In particular the avlues of enabling shared access to a person’s professional skills and time by multiple employers (e.g. as offered by Task Rabbit) has the potential to divide opinion. Whilst from a market perspective such innovation can be lauded as economically empowering the individual by providing create opportunities for employment, from a socialist perspective it can be easily critiqued as eroding workers rights and casualising the labour market.

In the table below I highlight 16 dimensions of the sharing economy each of which open up further potential for contestation and critique. To me this emphasises the extent to which the dynamics of politics and power pervade the sharing economy, and hence the political nature of seeking to define and place boundaries on the sharing economy.

This exploration of the challenges of defining the sharing economy have left me with the feeling that there is mileage in developing more explicitly normative definitions of the sharing economy – i.e. definitions that outlining a vision for what we want the sharing economy to become. Such definitions would of course be contested, but I believe might further open up the possibilities for acknowledging and understanding the politics at the heart of the sharing economy.

Some dimensions of the sharing economy	Some options for each dimension when creating a definition of the sharing economy
The actors do the sharing	Individual, consumer, citizen, organisation, cities, countries
The framing of empowerment in the sharing economy	The economic consumer, the digitally connected citizen, the individual
The framing of the things being ‘shared’	Resources, assets, products, services, skills, time, human resources, physical resources, networks, access
The forms of exchange considered to be ‘sharing’	Giving, renting, swapping, bartering, sharing ...
The role of digital technology in ‘sharing’	Central, definitional (if it isn’t online it isn’t the sharing economy), mediating, enabling, optional
The role of money in ‘sharing’	Necessary, optional, unacceptable
The scope of the sharing economy	A business model, a socio-economic system, a social movement, consumption, production
The Drivers of the sharing economy	Underutilised assets, disruptive technologies, waste, environmental concerns, hyper-consumption, the profit motive
The Purpose of the defining the sharing economy	Descriptive, normative
The Goals of the sharing economy	Efficiency, digital connectivity, sustainability transitions, economic opportunity, fulfilling consumer needs and desires
The Relationship between the sharing economy  and  traditional/offline/established forms of sharing	Taking established practices online and scaling up, alternative means of enacting established practices of sharing
The core values of the sharing economy	Efficiency, openness, trust, autonomy, economic liberty
The form of innovation taken by the sharing economy	Technological, social, open
The institutional logics enacted by the sharing economy	Capitalist, socialist, internet, peer-to-peer, digital society, the network, social enterprise, the triple bottom line
The thing being transforming or disrupting by the sharing economy	Business models, sharing practices, ownership practices, consumption practices, production practices
The potential impact of the sharing economy	Disruptive, transformative, human development

Reference

Schor, J. 2014. Debating the Sharing Economy. Available: http://greattransition.org/publication/debating-the-sharing-economy [Accessed 19th January 2015].

Exploring the barriers faced by the Open Government Data agenda

Advocates of Open Government Data^[1] (OGD) talk about the potential of such data to increase government transparency, catalyse economic growth, address social and environmental challenges and boost democratic participation. This heady mix of potential benefits has proved persuasive to the UK Government (and governments around the world). Over the past decade, since the emergence of the OGD agenda, the UK Government has invested extensively in making more of its data open. Yet the transformative impacts claimed by OGD advocates still seem a rather distant possibility. Even the more modest goal of integrating the creation and use of OGD into the mainstream practices of government, businesses and citizens remains to be achieved. In this blog I reflect upon the barriers preventing the OGD agenda from making a breakthrough into the mainstream. These reflections centre on the five key finds of my research, recently published in Policy and Internet, exploring where members of the UK OGD community perceive barriers to the OGD agenda. 

1. Barriers to the OGD agenda are perceived to be widespread

Unsurprisingly, given the relatively limited impact of OGD to date, my research shows that barriers to the OGD agenda are perceived to be widespread and numerous. What I find rather more surprising is the expectation, amongst policy makers, that these barriers should just melt away when exposed to the OGD agenda’s transparently obvious value and virtue.  Rather given that the breakthrough of the OGD agenda requires change across the complex socio-technical structures of government and society, many teething problems should be expected and considerable work will be required to overcome them.

2. Barriers on the demand side are of great concern

Members of the UK OGD community are particularly concerned about the wide range of demand side barriers, including the low level of demand for OGD across civil society and the public and private sectors. These concerns are likely to have arisen as a legacy of the OGD community’s focus on the supply of OGD, which has often led the community to overlook the need to nurture initiatives and groups that make use of OGD.

Adopting a strategic approach to supporting niches of OGD use could help overcome some of the demand side barriers. For example, such an approach could foster the social learning required to overcome barriers relating to the practices and business models of data users. Whilst there are encouraging signs that the Open Data Institute is supporting OGD use in the private sector, there remains a significant opportunity to improve the support offered to potential OGD users across civil society. It is also important to recognise that increasing the support for OGD users is not guaranteed to result in increased demand. Rather the possibility remains that demand for OGD is limited for many other reasons – including the possibility that the majority of businesses, citizens and community organisations find OGD of very little value.

3. The structures of government continue to act as barriers

Members of the UK OGD community are also concerned that major barriers remain on the supply side particularly in the form of the established structures and institutions of government. For example, barriers were perceived in the forms of the risk adverse cultures of government organisations and the ad hoc funding of OGD initiatives. Although resilient these structures are dynamic, so proponents of OGD need to be aware of emerging ‘windows of opportunity’ as they open up. Such opportunities may take the form of: tensions within the structures of government (e.g. restrictions on data sharing between different parts of government present an opportunity for OGD to create efficiency savings); and external pressures on government (e.g. the pressures exerted by a rapidly changing climate could create opportunities for OGD initiatives and demand for OGD).

4. There are major challenges mobilising resources to support the open government data agenda

The research results also showed that members of UK OGD community see mobilising the resources required to support the OGD as a major challenge. Concerns around securing funding are predictably prominent, but concerns also extend to developing the skills and knowledge required to use OGD across civil society, government and the private sector. These challenges are likely to persist whilst the post-financial crisis narrative of public deficit reduction through public spending reduction dominates the political agenda. This leaves OGD advocates to consider the politics and ethics of calling for investment in OGD initiatives whilst elsewhere spending reductions are leading to the degradation of public services provision to vulnerable and socially excluded individuals.

5. Within the OGD community the nature of some barriers remains contentious

OGD is often presented by advocates as a neutral, apolitical public good. However, my research highlights the important role that values and politics plays in how individuals within the OGD community perceive the agenda and the barriers it faces.  For example, there are considerable differences in opinion, within the OGD community, on whether or not a private sector focus on exploiting financial value from OGD is crowding out the creation of social and environmental value.  So benefits may arise from advocates being more open about the values and politics that underpin and shape the agenda. Whilst, OGD related policy and practice could create further opportunities for social learning which bring together the diverse values and perspectives that coexist within the OGD community.

Having considered the wide range of barriers to the breakthrough of OGD agenda, and some approaches to overcoming these barriers, these discussions need setting in a broader political context. If the agenda does indeed make a breakthrough into the mainstream, it remains unclear what form this will take. Will the OGD agenda make a breakthrough by conforming with, and reinforcing, prevailing neoliberal interests? Or will the agenda stretch the fabric of government, the economy and society, and transform the relationship between citizens and the state? 

If you are interested you are interested in reading more about the research underpinning this blog the published paper can be found here http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1944-2866.POI367/abstract  or do drop me an email requesting a copy (chris.martin@open.ac.uk).

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^[1]The Open Knowledge Foundation define Open Government Data as: data produced or commissioned by government or government controlled entities that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone.

Challenging the cultural values embedded in technologies: an opportunity for social innovation?

This blog was originally published by Nesta as part of a series of reflections on the issues raised at this year's Social Frontiers conference in Vancouver. To explore the blogs, or find out more information about the conference, visit the event page.

The nexus where social innovation and culture interact is a massively complex, inherently political and relatively uncharted research space. Thus, it comes as no surprise that challenging questions around the interrelationships between social innovation and culture remain to be addressed.

Some of the questions that have preoccupied me of late include: how does culture constrain, mediate and enable the processes of social innovation? How do actors immersed in different cultures relate to the concept of social innovation? How do contrasting cultures across the public and private sector and civil society influence the nature of social innovations?

In this blog I’m going to further complicate matters, by bringing technology into the discussion and posing a further question. How do the cultural values embedded within technologies shape the opportunities for social innovation? Let’s use the example of the smart energy meter to unpack this question a little.

In the UK, £10.9 billion is being invested in the roll out of smart energy meters to every home by 2020, in a top-down technologically driven initiative which the government hopes will enable citizens to “better manage...energy use, save money and reduce emissions”. A cursory examination of government policy reveals some of the cultural values embedded within smart meter technology.

First, rational decision-making is wrongly taken as a given. Once presented with information about their energy use (via a smart meter) people are expected to just change their energy consumption behaviour accordingly. Secondly, the smart meter is one more closed box of consumer electronics in the home. Policy-makers do not anticipated that people will want to customise or develop their smart meters.

So the question arises, can the smart meter be more than a technology, can it be part of a social innovation that reduces energy demand? Personally I’m not sure if this question can be answered yet. Rather I believe that we must await evidence of the subtle balance of positive and negative impacts made by the large scale rollout of such smart meters. Although the participative and empowering features that we would expect to see in a social innovation are far from prominent in current policy.

In the meantime, pending such evidence, it is interesting to explore alternative interpretations of the smart energy meter, which may sit more comfortably with our concept of social innovation. Here we can turn to the open source movement, and the grassroots community of 3000 technologists and environmental activists who are developing and using an Open Energy Monitor (OEM). A distinct set of cultural values, shaped by an open source philosophy, are embedded within an OEM.

First, the development of technologies is a collaborative enterprise, so anyone with the inclination and appropriate skills can contribute to the design and development of the monitor’s software and hardware. Secondly, technologies are designed to be customised, for example the owner of an OEM can determine if the energy consumption data they collect is shared. So is the OEM a social innovation?

Again I am unsure, but in this case I tend towards a yes, as the participative and empowering features that we would expect to see in a social innovation are prominent. Members of the community form new social relationships, they share expertise to address shared challenges, and they learn about the technology that mediates their daily lives.

So where does this brief discussion of social innovation, technology and culture leave us? I believe that it highlights the need for the emerging research agenda around culture and social innovation to embrace a technological dimension. Such an agenda might highlight the opportunities to conduct detailed empirical investigations, exploring how emerging social innovations challenge the cultural values embedded in prevailing technological paradigms.

More generally, we should further examine the intersection of social and technological forms of innovation, and seek to uncover problematic assumptions that technologies are mere instruments of social innovation.

Funding Digital Social Innovation

Sometimes we forget that social innovation is just as much about improving existing solutions to social problems as it is about creating new ones. Policymakers and funders of digital social innovation are due a reminder of this fact too.

That's not to deny the importance of new digital enabled approaches to tackling social issues. Working on a research project, at the Open University, studying digital social innovation we have spent days talking to truly inspirational people; who with the help of the Internet are working to solve some of the toughest problems we face.

Like many others, we have been happily swept along on a wave of enthusiasm for the novel, the emerging, and the high-tech. However, a nagging feeling remains that advocates of digital social innovation need to temper such enthusiasm. That in our rush to celebrate the latest example of Internet-powered progressive social change we are missing a trick or two.

Talking to volunteers involved in Freegle, a website that enables people to directly give unwanted items to others in their local area, really brings this home.

Freegle (a UK off shoot from Freecycle) is a huge, but often overlooked, success story of digital social innovation. A non-profit organisation with more than 1.6 million members, Freegle is run almost entirely by volunteers on an annual budget of £10,000, and saves 13,000 tonnes of potential waste from landfill each year.

Yet Freegle faces huge challenges when seeking funding to improve the service it offers. Edward Hibbert, a volunteer director of Freegle, believes that; “In the current climate it's extremely hard to win funding unless you employ professional fundraisers, or you invent a project just because it fits funding criteria.” 

“Sustaining and developing the core work of existing organisations with a proven track record too often takes second place to funding glamorous but ultimately doomed startups.  Given the spectacular impact Freegle has with such limited resources, we could do so much more, but we have effectively given up on the formal funding route as a waste of time - and we hate waste.” 

It seems Edward has point, in 2011 the Cabinet Office announced £10 million of funding to the support innovators develop the next Freecycle or JustGiving.

The focus on supporting start-ups, at the expense of more established innovations, may be a result of the dominance of Silicon Valley thinking in the world of digital social innovation.

The Silicon Valley model - start-up companies securing venture capital investment, establishing a business model, and scaling up – is not the only way to address social problems using the Internet though. This model often overlooks the persistent and complex nature of social problems, and the important role played by grassroots movements.

Of course we could be wrong. Maybe grassroots organisations would benefit from becoming more like an internet start-up. Freegle could certainly become more entrepreneurial, and find a Silicon Valley solution to its funding challenges. It could easily create a revenue stream by charging its members a small subscription fee.

It feels as though that this would undermine the grassroots principles of the organisation by excluding those with the least financial resources from the free reuse movement. 

So as our initial Internet optimism fades we are developing a more balanced and critical perspective on digital social innovation. A perspective which hopefully helps the digital social innovation community grapple with the tricky dilemmas of this era of enthusiasm for using the Internet to solve social problems. 

This blog was written jointly by Dr. Chris Martin (Research Fellow at the Open University) and Patrick Truss (Freelance Science and Technology Writer) 

A bit more thinking on social innovation and digital technologies: developing a critical perspective

It is very tempting to talk about the unprecedented opportunities for social innovation that have been opened up by the technologies of the digital era. It is tempting to go further, to gaze upon Wikipedia with wonder and to speculate how we can use the wiki approach to address a myriad of social problems (how about new forms of Wiki government?). However, both social innovation and digital technologies are hugely complex phenomena and any exploration of the relationship between the two requires a more critical perspective. Digital technologies can be considered as tools used to increase the impact and scale of social innovation, but they are not merely tools. These technologies even when used with the best of intentions create a subtle and ever changing balance of positive and negative impacts. Consider the Grameen Bank Village Phone programme which sought to empower women in deprived Bangledeshi communities by providing them with the tools (mobile phones) to become entrepreneurial microcredit brokers. Much debate remains over the impacts of this initiative both positive, e.g. creating new employment opportunities and improving the standing of women within their communities, and negative e.g. the appropriation of the profits of the entrepreneurial activity by men within the communities. Further complicating the picture, we live in a world pervaded (or even invaded) by digital technologies, they are integral to our day-to-day lives, they are embedded within the structures of society, and so they shape the opportunities available to social innovators and entrepreneurs. Digital technologies also directly create social needs which in turn necessitate further social innovation, indeed we now know that we need social innovations to help strike a better balance between the individual’s right to privacy and state surveillance on the Internet. So how do we start to deal with these complexities and move beyond the sense that digital social innovation is a somewhat vague but rather exciting idea?

First, as a society we need to better navigate the middle ground between techno-optimism and techno-phobia, to develop a more refined understanding of the role of digital technologies in social innovation. So rather than proclaiming that the data, captured by digital technologies, is “the 21^st century’s new raw material” which will catalyse the “innovation and enterprise that spurs social ... growth”, policymakers could seek to understand and address the contradictory impacts of digital social innovations. Instead of taking social problems as given and applying technological tools to address them, technologists could develop a deep understanding of the problem at hand. Accenture applied this approach in Copenhagen, where they employed a team of local ethnographers to understand the routines and lives of citizens before developing digital tools to improve quality of life within the city. Whilst social innovators and entrepreneurs could create spaces, such as Social Innovation Labs, for people to share and explore visions of better ways to live in a world pervade by digital technologies.

Secondly, we need to go to greater lengths to acknowledge and engage in the politics of digital social innovation. The political nature of social innovation is more readily apparent, as where innovation is orientated to addressing a social need we implicitly or explicitly challenge established interests, create conflicts, and call for redistribution of social and economic resources. The politics of digital technologies more often remain unseen and unquestioned in the form of values that are embedded within the design of these technologies, for example the advertising sidebar in Facebook tells us much about the efforts to monetise all aspects life. So where digital technologies are involved in social innovations and are considered as solely as enabling tools, we overlook some of the politics involved. We look for the positive in the technology and overlook the potential downsides, and so run the risk of pursuing an ill-fated technological fix to a political issue. Rather we could be inspired by emerging digital social innovations which engage citizens in the design and use of digital technologies to create more sustainable cities, such as the Smart Citizen Toolkit and Open Energy Monitor. Acting on upon this inspiration we could seek to democratise the politics of digital social innovation by enabling citizens to participate in both its social and technological aspects.

Social innovation and digital technologies - taking a critical perspective

Digital technologies tend to be talked about as enablers of social innovation, possessing a potential for creating disruptive and transformative change. For me this perspective is exemplified by simplistic arguments that social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, have transformed communication and so can now be used to help solve the major challenges faced by society (e.g. climate change and sustainability, demographic change, social exclusion …). By viewing digital technologies solely as enablers of social innovation we are only considering part of the picture.  Rather as a digital technology develops and is used by people a subtle and ever changing balance of positive and negative impacts also develops. So whilst digital technologies can help social entrepreneurs and innovators to address pressing social needs, we also need to recognise that these same technologies also create social needs. For example, the infrastructure of digital devices (smartphones, tablets etc.) can indeed enable social innovation, but only thanks to the unsustainable and often exploitive use of rare earth metals in the manufacture of these devices (which in turn of course contributes to other social needs).

The contradictory impacts of digital technologies are also important considerations in the design and development of specific social innovations. Here we can explore and talk about the balance of positive and negative impacts on individuals and their day-to-day experiences. As an illustrative example we can consider a social innovation that requires the more widespread use of digital technologies within school classrooms and seeks to improve educational outcomes. In such a case can space be created for students, teachers and parents to influence the balance of impacts, by exploring questions such as: how does the use of the technology help students to mindfully engage with the learning process? How does the technology act to increase the potential for digital distraction and information overload? How does the technology change the posture of children within the classroom? And is this likely to contribute to adverse health impacts? Ultimately I am suggesting that, in some very small way, a social innovation enabled by digital technology should prompt individuals, groups and institutions to consider a very large and challenging question. How can we live well in a world pervaded by digital technologies? By doing so we challenge the prevailing narrative that technologies are a social good and that any negative impacts are just the inevitable and necessary consequences of the onward march of technological progress.

When we talk about social innovation it is critical to recognise that it is an inherently political process. Where innovation is orientated to addressing a social need we challenge established interests, create conflicts, and call for redistribution of social and economic resources. Where digital technologies are involved in social innovations and are considered as solely as enabling tools, we mask and overlook some of the politics involved. We look for the positive in the technology and overlook the potential downsides, and so run the risk of pursuing an ill-fated technological fix to a political issue.