Social-Tech Entrepreneurs: Building Blocks of a New Social Economy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Mario Calderini, Veronica Chiodo, Francesco Gerli & Giulio Pasi: “Is it possible to create a sustainable, human-centric, resilient economy that achieves diverse objectives—including growth, inclusion, and equity? Could industry provide prosperity beyond jobs and economic growth, by adopting societal well-being as a compass to inform the production of goods and services?

The policy brief “Industry 5.0,” recently released by the European Commission, seems to reply positively. It makes the case for conceiving economic growth as a means to inclusive prosperity. It is also an invitation to rethink the role of industry in society, and reprioritize policy targets and tools

The following reflection, based on insights gathered from empirical research, is a first attempt to elaborate on how we might achieve this rethinking, and aims to contribute to the social economy debate in Europe and beyond.

A New Entrepreneurial Genre

A new entrepreneurial genre forged by the values of social entrepreneurship and fueled by technological opportunities is emerging, and it is well-poised to mend the economic and social wounds inflicted by both COVID-19 and the unexpected consequences of the early knowledge economy—an economy built around ideas and intellectual capital, and driven by diffused creativity, technology, and innovation.

We believe this genre, which we call social-tech entrepreneurship, is important to inaugurating a new generation of place-based, innovation-driven development policies inspired by a more inclusive idea of growth—though under the condition that industrial and innovation policies include it in their frame of reference.

This is partly because social innovation has undergone a complex transformation in recent years. It has seen a hybridization of social and commercial objectives and, as a direct consequence, new forms of management that support organizational missions that blend the two. Today, a more recent trend, reinforced by the pandemic, might push this transformation further: the idea that technologies—particularly those commoditized in the digital and software domains—offer a unique opportunity to solve societal challenges at scale.

Social-tech entrepreneurship differs from the work of high-tech companies in that, as researchers Geoffrey Desa and Suresh Kotha explain, it specifically aims to “develop and deploy technology-driven solutions to address social needs.” A social-tech entrepreneur also leverages technology not just to make parts of their operations more efficient, but to prompt a disruptive change in the way a specific social problem is addressed—and in a way that safeguards economic sustainability. In other words, they attempt to satisfy a social need through technological innovation in a financially sustainable manner. …(More)”.

A fair data economy is built upon collaboration

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Report by Heli Parikka, Tiina Härkönen and Jaana Sinipuro: “For a human-driven and fair data economy to work, it must be based on three important and interconnected aspects: regulation based on ethical values; technology; and new kinds of business models. With a human-driven approach, individual and social interests determine the business conditions and data is used to benefit individuals and society.

When developing a fair data economy, the aim has been to use existing technologies, operating models and concepts across the boundaries between different sectors. The goal is to enable not only new data-based business but also easier digital everyday life that is based on the more efficient and personal management of data. The human-driven approach is closely linked to the MyData concept.

At the beginning of the IHAN project, there were very few easy-to-use, individually tailored digital services. For example, the most significant data-based consumer services were designed on the basis of the needs of large corporations. To create demand, prevailing mindsets had to be changed and decision-makers needed to be encouraged to change direction, companies had to find new business with new business models and individuals had to be persuaded to demand change.

The terms and frameworks of the platform and data economies needed further clarification for the development of a fair data economy. We sought out examples from other sectors and found that, in addition to “human-driven”, another defining concept that emerged was “fair”, with fairness defined as a key goal in the IHAN project. A fair model also takes financial aspects into account and recognises the significance of companies and new services as a source of well-being.

Why did Sitra want to tackle this challenge to begin with? What had thus far been available to people was an unfair data economy model, which needed to be changed. The data economy direction had been defined by a handful of global companies, whose business models are based on collecting and managing data on their own platforms and on their own terms. There was a need to develop an alternative, a European data economy model.

One of the tasks of the future fund is to foresee future trends, the fair and human-driven use of data being one of them. The objective was to approach the theme in a pluralistic manner from the perspectives of different participants in society. Sitra’s unique position as an independent future fund made it possible to launch the project.

A fair data economy has become one of Sitra’s strategic spearheads and a new theme is being prepared at the time of the writing of this publication. The lessons learned and tools created so far will be moved under that theme and developed further, making them available to everyone who needs them….(More)“.

Did the GDPR increase trust in data collectors? Evidence from observational and experimental data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Paul C. Bauer, Frederic Gerdon, Florian Keusch, Frauke Kreuter & David Vannette: “In the wake of the digital revolution and connected technologies, societies store an ever-increasing amount of data on humans, their preferences, and behavior. These modern technologies create a trust challenge, insofar as individuals have to trust data collectors such as private organizations, government institutions, and researchers that their data is not misused. Privacy regulations should increase trust because they provide laws that increase transparency and allow for punishment in cases in which the trustee violates trust. The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018 – a wide-reaching regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy that covers millions of individuals in Europe – provides a unique setting to study the impact of privacy regulation on trust in data collectors. We collected survey panel data in Germany around the implementation date and ran a survey experiment with a GDPR information treatment. Our observational and experimental evidence does not support the hypothesis that the GDPR has positively affected trust. This finding and our discussion of the underlying reasons are relevant for the wider research field of trust, privacy, and big data….(More)”

Big Tech platforms in health research: Re-purposing big data governance in light of the General Data Protection Regulation’s research exemption

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Paper by Luca Marelli, Giuseppe Testa, and Ine van Hoyweghen: “The emergence of a global industry of digital health platforms operated by Big Tech corporations, and its growing entanglements with academic and pharmaceutical research networks, raise pressing questions on the capacity of current data governance models, regulatory and legal frameworks to safeguard the sustainability of the health research ecosystem. In this article, we direct our attention toward the challenges faced by the European General Data Protection Regulation in regulating the potentially disruptive engagement of Big Tech platforms in health research. The General Data Protection Regulation upholds a rather flexible regime for scientific research through a number of derogations to otherwise stricter data protection requirements, while providing a very broad interpretation of the notion of “scientific research”. Precisely the breadth of these exemptions combined with the ample scope of this notion could provide unintended leeway to the health data processing activities of Big Tech platforms, which have not been immune from carrying out privacy-infringing and socially disruptive practices in the health domain. We thus discuss further finer-grained demarcations to be traced within the broadly construed notion of scientific research, geared to implementing use-based data governance frameworks that distinguish health research activities that should benefit from a facilitated data protection regime from those that should not. We conclude that a “re-purposing” of big data governance approaches in health research is needed if European nations are to promote research activities within a framework of high safeguards for both individual citizens and society….(More)”.

Mapping European Attitudes towards Technological Change and its Governance.

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European Tech Insights 2021 by Oscar Jonsson and Carlos Luca de Tena: “…is composed of two studies: Part I focuses on how the pandemic has altered our habits and perceptions with regards to healthcare, work, social networks and the urban space. Part II reveals how Europeans are embracing technologies (from AI to automation) and what are the implications for our democracies and societies.

One year on from the outbreak of Covid-19, the findings of European Tech Insights 2021 reveal that the pandemic has accelerated the acceptance of technologies among Europeans but also increased awareness of the downsides of technological development….

Democracy in the Digital Age

Not only are citizens changing their attitudes and becoming more willing to use new technologies; they are also supportive of democracy going digital.

– A vast majority of Europeans (72%) would like to be able to vote in elections through their smartphone, while only 17% would oppose it. Strongest support is found in Poland (80%), Estonia (79%), Italy (78%) and Spain (73%).

– 51% of Europeans support reducing the number of national parliamentarians and giving those seats to an algorithm. Over 60% of Europeans aged 25-34 and 56% of those aged 34-44 are excited about this idea.

Embracing Technology

The research found growing support towards increased adoption of AI and new uses of technology:

– One third of Europeans would prefer that AI algorithms decide their social welfare payments or approve their visa for working in a foreign country, rather than a human civil servant

– A majority of Europeans support the use of facial technology for verifying the identity of citizens if that makes their lives more convenient. Increased support is seen in Italy (56%), Sweden (47%) or The Netherlands (45%).

– More than a third of Europeans would prefer to have a package delivered to them by a robot rather than a human…..(More)”.

Galileo and the Science Deniers

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Book by Mario Livio: “Galileo’s story may be more relevant today than ever before. At present, we face enormous crises—such as the minimization of the dangers of climate change—because the science behind these threats is erroneously questioned or ignored. Galileo encountered this problem 400 years ago. His discoveries, based on careful observations and ingenious experiments, contradicted conventional wisdom and the teachings of the church at the time. Consequently, in a blatant assault on freedom of thought, his books were forbidden by church authorities.

Astrophysicist and bestselling author Mario Livio draws on his own scientific expertise to provide captivating insights into how Galileo reached his bold new conclusions about the cosmos and the laws of nature. A freethinker who followed the evidence wherever it led him, Galileo was one of the most significant figures behind the scientific revolution. He believed that every educated person should know science as well as literature, and insisted on reaching the widest audience possible, publishing his books in Italian rather than Latin.

Galileo was put on trial with his life in the balance for refusing to renounce his scientific convictions. He remains a hero and inspiration to scientists and all of those who respect science—which, as Livio reminds us in this gripping book, remains threatened even today….(More)”.

How European Governments Can Help Spur Innovations for the Public Good

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Essay by By Marieke Huysentruyt: “…The stakes are high. In many OECD countries, inequality is at its highest levels in decades, and people are taking to the streets to express their discontent and demand change (in some cases at great personal risk). Only governments—with their uniquely broad scope of functions and mandates—can spur innovations for the public good in so many different domains simultaneously. Ideally, governments will step up and act collectively. After all, so many of today’s most pressing societal problems are global problems, beyond the scope of any single nation.

We Need a New Kind of Legal Framework to Activate and Transform Dormant Knowledge Into Innovations for the Public Good

Tremendous untapped potential lies dormant in knowledge and technology currently being used only for commercial purposes, but which could be put to significant social use. Consider the example of a cooling system currently being developed by Colruyt Group, a large Belgian retail group, to keep produce cool for up to three days without consuming electricity: such a technology could be applied elsewhere to great effect. For example, to help African farmers transport their milk or distribute vaccines over long (unelectrified) distances. Colruyt Group is therefore always looking for cases to implement their technology, so that it does not become dormant knowledge.

To facilitate this activation of dormant knowledges like these, we need a legal framework encouraging the development of “social impact licenses.” This would allow, for example, a technology holder to grant time-bounded permission to bring an intellectual property, a technology, a product, or a service to a predefined market for societal value creation at preferred rates or reduced costs. Another important step would be for EU governments to mandate that recipients of their innovation grants be required to give others access to their research, so it can be leveraged for practical, social purposes. Putting these sorts of measures in place would not only influence the next generation of researchers but could encourage businesses (who hold a great deal of intellectual property) to think more ambitiously about the positive societal impact that they can make.

We Need Better Information to Activate People to Search for the Public Good

Most of us lack a clear understanding of the societal problems at hand or have flawed mental models of pressing societal issues. Complexity and ambiguity tend to put people off, so governments must provide citizens with better and more reliable information about today’s most pressing societal challenges and solutions. The circular economy, greenhouse effects, the ecological transition, the global refugee problem, for example, can be difficult to grasp, and for this reason, access to non-partisan information is all the more important.

Sharing information about feasible solutions (as well as about solutions that have been tested and abandoned) can hugely accelerate discovery, as demonstrated by the joint efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, shared across many labs. And just as they have played a key role in the development of the Internet and aviation technologies, governments can and should play a major role in building the technological and data infrastructure for sharing information about what works and what doesn’t. Again, because the problems are global, coordinating efforts across national boundaries could help reduce the costs and increase the benefits of such knowledge infrastructure.

Another essential tool in governments’ toolbox is fostering the development of other-regarding preferences: the more people care about others’ well-being, the more willing they are to contribute to search for the public good. For example, in a recent large-scale experiment in Germany, second-grade children were matched with mentors—potential prosocial role models—who spent one afternoon per week in one-to-one interactions with the children, doing things like visiting a zoo, museum, or playground, cooking, ice-skating, or simply having a conversation. After two years, the kids who had been assigned to mentors revealed a significant and persistent increase in prosociality, as captured through choice experiments and survey measures. Evaluations of this large-scale experiment suggest that prosociality is malleable, and that early childhood interventions of this type have the potential to systematically affect character formation, with possible long-term benefits….(More)”.

We know what you did during lockdown

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An FT Film written by James Graham: “The Covid-19 pandemic has so scrambled our lives that we have barely blinked when the state has told us how many people can attend a wedding, where we can travel or even whether we should hug each other. This normalisation of the abnormal, during the moral panic of a national healthcare emergency, is the subject of People You May Know, a short film written by the playwright James Graham and commissioned by the Financial Times.

One of Britain’s most inquisitive and versatile playwrights, Graham says he has long been worried about the expansion of the “creeping data state” and has an almost “existential anxiety about privacy on all levels, emotional, philosophical, political, social”. Those concerns were first explored in his play Privacy (2014) in response to the revelations of Edward Snowden, the US security contractor turned whistleblower, who described how “the architecture of oppression” of the surveillance state had been built, if not yet fully utilised. 

In his new FT film, Graham investigates how the response to the pandemic has enabled the further intrusion of the data state and what it might mean for us all. “The power of drama is that it allows you to take a few more stepping stones into the imagined future,” he says in a Google Meet interview. …(More) (Film)”

Stewarding innovation portfolios for the ecosystem: catalysing collective system change

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Case study by Emily Wise: “…Future by Lund (FBL) is an innovation platform located in the city of Lund, in southern Sweden. The municipality of Lund spearheads this collaborative effort (with more than 50 partners) to catalyse innovative solutions for sustainable and attractive cities and to strengthen the innovation culture of the ecosystem in Lund. Since its start in 2013, FBL has developed its system leadership function – scouting trends and identifying opportunities, matching relevant actors and catalyzing collaborative action, and developing a community of actors (companies, universities, research institutes, innovation support actors) and portfolio of activities that (collectively) contribute to a more sustainable and attractive city. For instance, FBL gathered a group of actors and facilitated initial activities to develop an electric road – moving from idea to national demonstrator over the course of six years. FBL played a similar “initial catalyst” role in developing a new energy solution – Ectogrid.

FBL is one of six innovation platforms supported through a programme at Sweden’s innovation agency – Vinnova, which is soon coming to its end. The funding and other support from Vinnova have helped FBL build its capacity to proactively foster innovation activities that respond to challenges and sustainable development aims that can only be addressed in collaboration with others – operating in between municipal and other organisational mandates, in the more exploratory, uncertain, and bottom-up areas of innovation activity (see figure below).

Figure 1: Future by Lund – leading in between organisations…(More)”.

Improving hand hygiene in hospitals: comparing the effect of a nudge and a boost on protocol compliance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Henrico van Roekel, Joanne Reinhard and Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen: “Nudging has become a well-known policy practice. Recently, ‘boosting’ has been suggested as an alternative to nudging. In contrast to nudges, boosts aim to empower individuals to exert their own agency to make decisions. This article is one of the first to compare a nudging and a boosting intervention, and it does so in a critical field setting: hand hygiene compliance of hospital nurses. During a 4-week quasi-experiment, we tested the effect of a reframing nudge and a risk literacy boost on hand hygiene compliance in three hospital wards. The results show that nudging and boosting were both effective interventions to improve hand hygiene compliance. A tentative finding is that, while the nudge had a stronger immediate effect, the boost effect remained stable for a week, even after the removal of the intervention. We conclude that, besides nudging, researchers and policymakers may consider boosting when they seek to implement or test behavioral interventions in domains such as healthcare….(More)”.