Collaborative communities require a wide range of face-to-face and online communication tools. Their socio-technical systems continuously grow, driven by evolving stakeholder requirements and newly available technologies. Designing tool systems that (continue to) match authentic community needs is not trivial. Collaboration patterns can help community members specify customized systems that capture their unique requirements, while reusing lessons learnt by other communnities. Such patterns are an excellent example of combining the strengths of creativity and rationale. In this chapter, we explore the role that collaboration patterns can play in designing the socio-technical infrastructure for collaborative communities. We do so via a cross-case analysis of three Dutch social innovation communities simultaneously being set-up. Our goal with this case study is two-fold: (1) understanding what social innovation is from a socio-technical lens and (2) exploring how the rationale of collaboration patterns can be used to develop creative socio-technical solutions for working communities.

1. Creativity Meets Rationale:
Collaboration Patterns for
Social Innovation
Aldo de Moor
CommunitySense
WWW.COMMUNITYSENSE.NL
FARG Seminar
University of Alabama in Huntsville
30 August 2013

2. Social innovation
• Many definitions…
• Social (Stanford Social Innovation Review)
– A novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient,
sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value
created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private
individuals
• Economic (e.g. Midpoint Brabant)
– Governments, enterprises and educational institutes jointly explore
new possibilities, discover markets, develop areas and facilities
• Summarizing
– Jointly with all stakeholders find sustainable solutions for societally
relevant problems
– Create individual and societal added value
2

3. Midden-Brabant: THE Dutch social
innovation region

4. Social Innovation Award Academy

5. Transforming education: Prins Heerlijk

6. Transforming healthcare: Into D’Mentia

7. Social innovation collaboration model
Developer
network
Stakeholder
network
C1 C2
C4 C5
User network
C3
Core Community

8. The social innovation process
8
Source: http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/Social_Innovator_020310.pdf

9. Scaling public libraries innovation
9

10. Collaborative sensemaking
10
Source: BNB/Cubiss public library sensemaking session, May 2013

11. Collaboration patterns –
sharing lessons learnt
• Creativity & rationale are co-dependent in design
• Patterns: relatively stable solutions to recurring problems at
the right level of abstraction
• Collaboration patterns: reusable lessons learnt on how best
to use specific functionalities for particular collaborative
purposes
• Root ontology of collaboration patterns is the socio-technical
conversation context framework
11

12. Conversations in context
Participation
Look
Do
Interact
Collaborate

13. SIC cross-case role analysis

14. SIC cross-case tool analysis

15. Social innovation concept type
hierarchy
…

16. SIC-model: filling it in
Developer
network
Stakeholder
network
C5
User network
Core Community

17. Using common conceptual ground…
An (enabled) communication pattern template

18. To reuse collaboration lessons learnt
A composite collaboration pattern:
reducing collaborative fragmentation (C5)

19. Many applications of
collaboration patterns
• Collaborative sensemaking
• Analyzing differences between requirements & functionalities;
existing and good/best practices
• Configuring collaboration systems
• Growing “collaborative landscapes” by linking “collaborative
islands”
• Activating and scaling collaboration
• Bridging theory and practice by acting as socio-technical design
hypotheses
• ….
19

20. Linking technical & social innovation
in Noord-Brabant

21. And in Alabama?

22. Conclusions
• Social innovation is a fuzzy, intricate process
• Involves very complex collaboration networks, evolving over time
• Social innovation collaboration requires careful socio-technical
systems analysis & design
• Collaboration patterns capture reusable lessons learnt
• Working on a
– Social innovation collaboration pattern language
– hands-on methodology to describe, analyze, compare, (re)use, and
evolve social innovation collaboration patterns
• Towards more scalable and sustainable social innovation,
having deep impact on society
22
Reference: A. de Moor (2012). Creativity Meets Rationale - Collaboration Patterns for Social Innovation. In
J. Carroll (ed.), Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience by Design, Springer, Berlin. ISBN
978-1-4471-4110-5 - http://communitysense.nl/papers/2012_De%20Moor_Creativity_Meets_Rationale-
Collaboration_Patterns_for_Social_Innovation.pdf