Enterprise and innovation. The role of sharing economy

Enterprise and innovation. The role of sharing economy

by | Jul 15, 2016 | The Urban Media Lab

0001Monday, July 11st, 2016 Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori ed Audiovisivi hosted a two-hour conference entitled “Impresa e innovazione. Il ruolo della sharing economy” in Rome. The conference was organised by student association Students For Liberty – Rome in partnership with Istituto Bruno Leoni and Fondazione “Luigi Einaudi”. Four speakers animated the debate:

  • Sergio Boccadutri (Member of Italian Parliament and Partito Democratico Responsible for Innovation)
  • Luigi Corvo (Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Rome Tor Vergata)
  • Franco Debenedetti (President of Istituto Bruno Leoni)
  • Carlo Tursi (General Manager for Uber Italia).

The moderator was Lorenzo Castellani (Scientific Director of Fondazione Luigi Einaudi).

First of all, Corvo referring to sharing economy dimension explained that: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. This statement means that closed-minded people don’t want to see and search the evidence of transition. It is true both in sharing economy and in other part of life. Corvo then presented his research about sharing economy. The analysis of the phenomenon requires a brain exercise. It is necessary to find sharing economy enabling factors such as:

  • Sleeping assets (for example unused rooms for Airbnb)
  • Coordination costs = 0 (people have no costs in coordinate themselves to share their sleeping assests on a platform)
  • Risks spread (capital is distribuited: nobody risks more than he or she wants)
  • Relation and trust among community

Then, he underlined the hallmarks of the transition toward a new forms of economy. Example of this it is the graph elaborated by P2P Foundation about four future scenarios.  In this chart the four fruits of the digitally trasformed economy are divided in two macro areas: capital on one end (neo-feudal cognitive capitalism) and the commons on the other (mature peer production ): this is the first axe. Then, within these areas we are a centralized or distribuited control of a infrastructure that produce Enterprise As Usual (or “Netarchial capitalism such as Facebook), New SME (or “Distribuited capitalism” such as Kickstarter), New big players (o “Resilient Communities” such as Degrowth movement) and Social innovation or “Global Commons”.

According to Corvo’s vision, changes are taking place in different sectors:

  • Enterprise: from a hierarchical model to a circular model.
  • Ecosystem that now is integrated and not divided. The traditional ecosystem is based on different output for different actors (Public Sector produces public value, Enterprises produce profit and Society produces social value). In the new scenario, PA, Enterprises and Society work for 3P: People, Planet and Profit.
  • The model. In order to predict the birth of new innovative platforms, we have to find when the fall of coordination costs and risks from sharing economy trigger the change: this is the rate of transformation from conventional economy to sharing economy.

A further point is the repositioning of actors that is based on certain assumptions:

  • Innovation is the way
  • Protected markets are dangerous
  • No reputation means no future
  • Fragility

With respect to this very matter, in the last part of his presentation Corvo explained sharing economy in the light of Mr. Taleb book Antifragile. Things that Gain from Disorder. For more information, please click here.

In the second part of the conference speakers discussed about the role of sharing economy in the society and in public institutions. According with his professional experience, Carlo Tursi showed the Uber story and experience in the world, especially in Europe and Italy. He analyzed the most problematic issues in terms of privacy, costs and impact on society. In his opinion, an important point was that Uber had also a social impact in terms of social flanking measures for people that had lost their job. This controversial issue had stimulated a debate with the audience.

Then, Sergio Boccadutri showed his view about sharing economy: he thinks that it is necessary to overcome the traditional vision of labour market (citizen’s role of prosumer is fundamental) and approve a start-up-friendly tax regime. According to him, it is clear that the world is changing and the policymaker must be ready to act properly.

In the end the President of Istituto Bruno Leoni, Franco Debenedetti drew the conclusions of the conference talking about Italian industrial policy. He focused his attention on the role and the future of some jobs such as bankers, lawyers and doctors: in his view these jobs will be the most influenced and changed by the sharing economy. it is necessary to study this fact.

In conclusion, what emerged from this conference was a clear vision of the actual liquid-situation and the belief that facilitating sharing economy activities is the way to generate economic growth.

Call Me Plural Sector!

Call Me Plural Sector!

by | May 25, 2016 | EducationLabs, The Urban Media Lab

plural-sectorHenry Mintzberg, Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University, wrote an interesting article about the identity and the role of Plural Sector. This article was published on Stanford Social Innovation Review in Summer 2015.

The article talks about the third sector that has not been able to settle on an acceptable label: indeed, third sector reminds a third-rate thing, non-profits and non-governmental organisations are not clear because governments are literally non-profit and businesses non-governmental. If we call it voluntary, we will underline the role of volunteers, if civil society, we will consider it in opposition to an uncivil society. Social sector is a good label only if it is used with political and economic sector.

The author thinks that the label plural sector is the best choice for two reasons: first of all, because of the variety of this sector’s associations and their range of ownerships and secondly, because it can take its place naturally alongside the labels public and private.

In addition, it is clear that this sector is really plural: there are associations owned by their members (i.d. Mondragon, the world’s largest federation of worker cooperatives) and associations owned by no one such as foundations, religious order, think tanks, activist NGOs and service NGOs. On this point, the article “The Invisible World of Association by Henry Mintzberg et al., shows an interesting categorization of the associations:

  • Mutual associations which serve their own members (book clubs);
  • Benefit associations which serve other people (food banks);
  • Protection associations which advocate for their members (chambers of commerce);
  • Activist associations which advocate for the needs of others (Amnesty International).

A lot of these associations are formally organized but the most significant are the spontaneous one. There are two types:

  • Social movements: their aim is to struggle some aspects of the status quo such as the occupation of Wall Street and the American Tea Party movement.
  • Social initiatives: their goal is to defend programs of social change, first in local communities such as Grameen Bank.

Then, according to the author, plural sector has been attacked by different forces and it is trying to defend itself by the pressures from the other two sectors and the consequences of new technologies. In history, both communism and capitalism have been undermining the plural sector where they have dominated. Communists government have never loved community associations, in fact, the first crack in the URSS was caused by two plural sector organisations: the Catholic Church and the Solidarity Union in Poland. Even democratic governments sometimes had a strange relationship with community organisations: i.d. the amalgamations of small towns into bigger cities as a consequence of economic growth no matter the social outcome. If it is possible, the private sector is more “dangerous”: an example of this is the struggle between fast food chains and local cuisines.

At this point, the author affirms that: “There is a homogenizing effect in globalization that is antithetical to the distinctiveness of communities. As a consequence, while private sectors have been expanding their powers globally, plural sectors have been withering locally”.

New technologies even are detrimental for the plural sector because the new social media connect people creating network not communities. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, reporting an Egyptian friend about the role of social movement, says that Facebook really helped people to communicate but not to collaborate.

In Mintzberg’s opinion, today, it is time to rebalance society. People require attention to three basic needs: protection provided by governments, consumption provided by businesses and affiliations found in communities. A healthy society combines these three factors balanced. Weaken any one of these and a society falls out of balance.

It is clear that there was not balance in communist regimes because the public sector dominated the other two, but it is also easy to understand that in the “developed” world consumption has become excessive. So, communist regimes collapsed because they were out of balance but US are out of balance (demise of democracies, ongoing denigrations of ourselves, …).

The question is: “Who will lead radical renewal?” Certainly not the private sector because the imbalance favors many of them. The answer is, of course, the plural sector: the renewal will have to begin in communities on the ground.

Although the plural sector seems to be obscure, surely it is not impotent: a good point is attributed to the independence and flexibility of many of its associations. If the private sector is about individual ownership and the public sector is about collective citizenship, the plural sector is about shared communityship (these associations are able to function as communities of engaged human beings rather than collections of passive human resources).

The plural sector is not perfect but it offers a way to restore balance in society, in other words, constructive social movements and social initiatives, carried out in local communities and networked for global impact, are the greatest hope we have for regaining balance in this troubled world. But something will first have to change in the plural sector.

In the last part of the article, Mintzberg says that the main problem is that the sector does not act collectively because of its plurality. This is not a problem for the private sector because it is less dispersed especially when profit is involved. This does not mean that the plural sector should imitate business practices but it can learn from it (and vice versa). According to him, “it [the plural sector] has to focus on its distinctiveness. Let’s welcome partnerships across institutions of the three sectors, as long as they are balanced, with full recognition of the contributions that can be made by each of the partners”. In conclusion, what plural sector needs are partnerships for the cause of better balance in the world.

L’etichetta “terzo settore” non mostra chiaramente e senza alcun dubbio l’identità e le caratteristiche di questo settore. Henry Mintzbeg in questo articolo spiega come il “terzo settore” meriti un nome migliore in ragione dell’importanza che ha nel ristabilire un equilibrio in questo mondo tormentato.

Community Financing in Collaboration with the Administration

Community Financing in Collaboration with the Administration

by | May 9, 2016 | The Urban Media Lab

 

Banner_Rome_WEBSITECommunity financing in collaboration with the Administration. This was the theme of the first event in the three-day long workshop “Funding the Cooperative City – Rome” Nuovi modelli per spazi comunitari, which took place in Rome (@Casa della Città) on 5th May.

In front of the audience, Daniela Patti, Managing Director of Eutropian GmbH in Vienna and Founder of Eutropian association in Rome, introduced local and international speakers:

Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative and Freehouse bring existing workspaces, entrepreneurs, producers, social organizations and the market together. They promote sustainable local production, knowledge, cultural development and entrepreneurship based on shared responsibility and participation. The primary purpose is for people in the Afrikaander district to reclaim the right to develop their own neighbourhood.

Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative and Freehouse are working in Rotterdam-Zuid’s Afrikaander district to create a stronger and wealthier area for residents and businesses. In order for the Afrikaander district not become the victim of the expansion of the creative city, Freehouse set up small-scale projects to regenerate the districts and its market from within. In collaboration with residents, artists, and fashion designer Freehouse created a workshop for making and designing clothes, a communal kitchen area and a shop selling local products and offering small-scale delivery services. Another crucial element is the Afrikaander Market, which has been in decline for several years because it is not possible to combine products and services on the same stall.  With over 300 acts of civil disobedience, they found a solution: red carpet fashion shows presented the work of young local designers and alongside items available on the market. In addition, the one-sided market assortment was expanded with local quality products. At the present, they offer over 48 jobs and various internship to the community.

Fondazione Cascina Roccafranca, founded by Turin municipality and participated by associations and informal groups is an innovative, social and cultural civic centre designed to citizen participation. It is a “container” that provides service: such as an accommodation centre, advice shops, a restaurant and a cafeteria that contribute to economic sustainability. There is also an Eco-museum and activities about ethical consumption, courses (theatre, dance, painting, diction …) reading groups, cinema clubs, foreign language courses, after-school programs, etc. Both the Foundation and other actors organize the activities and the services.

There are 100 courses involving over 3500 people, not only from the neighbourhood but also from the entire city. Actually, 40 volunteers and 20 specialists work in the Foundation. Through the improvement of relationship among different ages, cultures and actors, the Foundation wants to encourage citizens to be a part of their community and to work not only for their private needs but also for the commons. To do this, it is necessary to focus on citizen rights, social cohesion and new models of cooperation (especially PPP).

Zo-Ho is Rotterdam’s makers’ quarter. In 2013, owner Havensteder, Stipo and Municipality cooperated and decided to develop the area in a gradual process called slow urbanism. The area has been the opportunity to redevelop itself for 10 years. Havensteder offered tenants the chance to use and develop their property in an appropriate manner. The municipality provided spaces for experimentation and invested in social strategy and public spaces. Tenants found suitable neighbours and provided frameworks for the development of buildings and public spaces. Thus, users of the area, companies, organizations, inhabitants, and visitors can get involved with the development plans.

Two examples of improving Zo-Ho at eye level are Restaurant Gare du Nord (a successful organic vegan restaurant in a former train wagon on a derelict building site. The staff came from the neighbourhood) and residents from the Noord district starting an area cooperation to improve their district in an economic sustainable way. Zo-Ho become an experimenting and prototyping area and the success of the project persuaded other people to join the district.

LabGov Luiss is a place of experimentation, created to train the “experts in the governance of urban commons”. The goal is to create a new institutional and economic system based on the model of “civic collaboration”, “collaborative governance of the commons” and “circular subsidiarity”, according to which public institutions shall favor all citizens (individuals or in associative forms). In order to achieve social and institutional regeneration, it is necessary to create collaborative relationships between citizens, administrations and businesses to share the scarce resources and to take care of the commons, whether tangible or intangible, in urban and local community.

Prof. Iaione talked about the experiences of Pilastro, Co-Bologna and Co-Roma underlining some key points. First, the scheme of experimentation concerns reproducing institutions in the street (it is a matter of co-design; the results are new forms of social institutions). Then, it is a tension between social norms and formal rules because bureaucracy doesn’t work in the same direction (public procurement is different from co-design) but it is necessary a collaborative approach between internal and external actors to agglomerate knowledge. LabGov’s work is an experimental research on the field; it is natural that there are problems and imperfections in the process because we are in a transition from dualistic to cooperative paradigm. The city could be seen as a laboratory. There is not one solution, it’s a process.

Area Studi ANCI is a part of Cittalia – Fondazione Anci Ricerche and it is a network dedicated to research and study activities on issues of major interest for Italian Municipalities. The Foundation initially got involved in environmental, institutional and innovation programs and then focus on welfare, social inclusion, local governance, public and urban policies. The mission of Cittalia is to support Italian cities and Municipalities in facing the challenges of a changing society, so that they can develop effective public policies and improve their capacity to plan, manage and assess their actions.

Regarding the state of art of the co-city, Dr. Allulli agrees with the previous speaker. He talked about three assumptions: city rulers intend Co-city as a mere replacement of the role of PA (it is not correct because Co-city is more). The second assumption concerns the lack of understanding between politicians and social innovators because the former talks about money, the latter about legitimization, spaces and resources. Then he affirms that, although the contradictory situation, Italy is a land of pioneers: a lot of PA are changing their mind, they think in term of resources not only money. According to this, good news are the crowdfunding growing experience, participatory budgeting and exchanging best practices.

WithYouWeDO is a TIM’s Social Responsibility Enterprise programme. It is a crowdfunding platform, c’est-à-dire a method of web funding by large numbers of people, or crowds, with the goal of raising funds, even of small amounts, to finance projects placed on a platform/website. This platform is available for the non-profit sector and the public. WithYouWeDo promotes and supports the funding of initiatives, ideas and projects in the following areas:

  • Social Innovation: from innovative projects for solidarity to building new models for integration.
  • Spreading Digital Culture: schools, art and literature, from protecting heritage to innovation in the expression of creativity.
  • Environmental Protection: everything that relates to environmental sustainability.

The platform includes two types of support:

  • Reward Based Crowdfunding is form of fundraising to support a project in exchange for non-monetary recognition or reward on achieving the objective set out at the start of the campaign.
  • Donation Based Crowdfunding on the other hand is a way of donating to support a given idea or campaign, without receiving anything in return: a sort of ‘intellectual investment’.

An example of this, it is Mappina.

In conclusion, we can affirm that this event has been an opportunity to discover citizen spaces and new economic models for community-led urban development with initiatives from Italy and Europe.

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Funding the Cooperative City – Rome è stata un’occasione per conoscere nuovi modelli economici per uno sviluppo urbano promossi dalla cittadinanza con iniziative italiane e straniere. In particolare, l’evento del 5 maggio intitolato “Finanziamento di comunità in collaborazione con l’Amministrazione” si è caratterizzato come una chiacchierata tra esperienze italiane (LabGov e Cascina Roccafranca), internazionali (Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative e Zo-Ho) e contributi tecnici (Area Studi ANCI e WithTouWeDo).

UrbanMeta, Eutropian and an Advice from the Research

UrbanMeta, Eutropian and an Advice from the Research

by | Apr 26, 2016 | The Urban Media Lab

logo-urbanmeta-500x200UrbanMeta represents a large part of the Venetian civil society and stakeholders of the building sector. This network includes economic groups, professionals, universities, trade unions, builders and environmentalists. These actors have decided to be a part of a worktable to face the issues of the government of the area and the land consumption in a multi-disciplinary approach that allows achieving a sustainable growth through urban regeneration processes.

UrbanMeta’s vision is explained by the manifesto “Un Patto per un programma regionale di strategie politiche di Rigenerazione Urbana Sostenibile – Obiettivi e valori per le città venete del futuro” in which it is said that the launch of urban regeneration innovative policies is fundamental and urgent for the cultural, economic, politic and social growth of the Region. In the report, urban regeneration projects aim to:

  • Stop the expansion of new building;
  • Connect urban areas with rural ones;
  • Encourage the use of urban planning and rethinking administrative practices;
  • Promote mixité, equity and social inclusion;
  • Stimulate citizen participation;
  • Innovate building practices;
  • Simplify legislation and procedures.

According to this plan, UrbanMeta undertakes to build an integrated system of communication among stakeholders, became the local pivot in this sector, examine the possibilities given by the EU financing programmes and train experts in urban regeneration system. Then, stakeholders ask the Veneto Region to target EU funds at regeneration programmes, to work in Conferenza Stato-Regioni to promote a national legislation and to adopt a regional law on this matter.

UrbanMeta is not the only project in this field, another one is Eutropian. According to the website, it is “alogo eutropianplanning, policy and research organisation helping urban regeneration processes”. They offer assistance to municipalities, NGOs and community groups, policy development and fundraising, cooperation and communication activities. Their specialization concerns “urban regeneration, cultural development, community participation, local economic development and social innovation”. Eutropian offer, also, a multi-disciplinary approach (such as UrbanMeta) that allows activating urban unused resources with the help of experts and citizen knowledge. The main difference with UrbanMeta is about the dimension: Eutropian operates at world level whereas UrbanMeta at local one. This international know-how follows different tiers:

  • Environmental Planning: open spaces in urban areas are more than just recreational purposes: they can lead economic local growth in a natural environment. It is possible to bring together offer and demand to a balanced solution for both sides;
  • Urban Regeneration: it relates to the involvement of human and financial capital to reuse abandoned industrials sites, cinemas or schools. Regeneration might be the way to discover the potential of the city;
  • Cultural Development: the identity and the meaning of a city is done by a “permanent yet constantly changing culture”.
  • Smart City: ICT is a tool that can improve our lives, on the condition that it is used wisely. A multi-disciplinary approach is fundamental to reach energy efficiency in buildings, smart grids, digital platform, etc.

To develop local cohesion, Eutropian offers different services: fundraising, international cooperation, project management, participatory planning, policy development and communication.

UrbanMeta and Eutropian’s community-led approach is surely an innovative perspective to face the problem of urban regeneration but there could be some issues.

“Capacity building for community-led regeneration. Facilitating or frustrating public engagement?” by Paul O’Hare is a study of community organization, operating within a UK neighbourhood, supported by an “infrastructure organization”, namely Community Empowerment Network (CEN), a local authority and community and voluntary sector.

According to the author of the paper, the engagement of communities is a revered and integral aspect of governance processes. On the other hand, statutory initiatives raise serious issues although they provide opportunities and support for engagement with the inhabitants of local communities. Moreover, “there was a lack of clarity regarding the definition of “capacity building” but, in broad terms, it refers to the practical support provided to communities to contribute to governance as equal partner, or to enable the wider community to engage in the opportunities provided by economic and social regeneration” (Diamond and Liddle, 2005).

Theoretically, capacity building holds the potential to help communities understand decision-making processes, to communicate more effectively at differing tiers of governance, to take decision, and to eventually “manage their own destinies” (Schuftan, 1996, p. 261). In this case, the focus is turned toward organizational and managerial capacity of local communities to assume responsibility leading regeneration programmes. In practice, capacity building takes a variety of forms, namely, the provision of practical support and the development of skills and structures (Diamond and Liddle, 2005, p.148). A range of agencies, i.d. CENs, may build this capacity: here, CENs, primarily established to help local communities pursue the UK Government’s Neighbourhood, play a supporting, coordinating, representative, policymaking and developmental role for other voluntary and community organization.

This research shows many problems such as:

  • Groups can become preoccupied with top-down forms of fiscal and operational accountability rather than bottom-up forms of accountability;
  • Partnership established may in fact be manipulated in a variety of manners and to a range of ends (Rowe, 2006):;
  • Dilemma of institutionalization;
  • Restrictions upon activity of actors are enacted through regulation, incentivisation and surveillance (Richards and Smith, 2002);
  • Governance becomes more complex;
  • Groups engaged in activities for which they receive payment from the state may neglect the important function of campaigning (result of coercion, self-censorship, lack of time, etc.);
  • Funders can be more interested in how money is spent than in the merits of projects;
  • Given that the group was spending public money, there were a set of “absolutely legitimate formalities they have to cover” and local government becomes a manifestation of centralised control;
  • The group is entirely formed by volunteers that lack the capacity to address problems as and when they arise, so they depend upon the CEN to take care of such issues.

In conclusion, according to this article, we discover that community organisations may develop a significant degree of dependency upon facilitators such as CENs. Thus, there is the risk that capacity becomes something developed rather than built in a linear style. Furthermore, the external initiatives can restrict the autonomy of the community-based groups. These outcomes are very important because they give us the opportunity to understand community-led approach vulnerabilities and a try to improve this policy.

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L’approccio community-led alle pratiche di riqualificazione urbana riscuote un grande successo nelle odierne esperienze di settore. Riprova di questo, sono il network UrbanMeta e l’associazione Eutropian, che seppur in modo diverso, lavorano nel campo della riqualificazione urbana mantenendo salto il riferimento al coinvolgimento della comunità. Il community-led approach, però, mostra però alcune problematicità che si sostanziano principalmente nella dipendenza degli attori locali nei confronti dei facilitatori pubblici.