Design for social enterprises. Co-designing an organizational and cultural change

Abstract

The debate on social innovation agrees on the idea that social innovation creates new relationships and roles, enhancing better uses of assets and resources, supporting mutualism and developing capabilities: in this framework social enterprises may play a crucial role, especially if supported by a design-driven approach. Such reflection builds upon two experimentations developed in Italy: the first one aimed at investigating new strategies to enhance the distinctive collaborative role of social enterprises, the second one was devoted to rethinking the existing services of cooperatives by including users in the co-design and co-production phases. Benefiting from the lessons learnt from these two case studies, this paper attempts to shape the notion of ‘design for social enterprises’ as a field in which a combination of design methods and tools may support a cultural and organisational change that places collaboration with communities of users and other local actors at the centre of the social entrepreneurial process.