On this page you can find the list of all NZC resources on social innovation for climate neutrality in cities: (1) quick read; (2) video; (3) Social Innovation Actionable Pathways map; (4) NZC Seasonal Schools resource; (5) Social Innovation Learning Club; (6) case studies; (7) methods to implement social innovation in cities; (8) Social Innovation assessment: process and outcome indicators; (9) NZC Deliverables on Social Innovation; and (10) scientific publications

1.Quick read on Social Innovation

2.Video: Creating an Ecosystem for Change: The NetZeroCities Approach to Social Innovation

3.The NZC Social Innovation Actionable Pathways map

Download the social innovation actionable pathways pdf with interactive links to the case studies

4.NZC Seasonal Schools resources:

Presentation on Social innovation (2023 pdf)

5.Social Innovation Learning Club: direct link to the group

6.Case studies:

• 1.5 Degree Lifestyles: Finnish cities have been experimenting with a vision of sustainable living. The tool “1.5 Degree Lifestyles Puzzle” was used to help households and other stakeholders understand what changes they need to make in their lifestyles to significantly drop their carbon footprint. Individual carbon footprints were calculated at the project start and the development was monitored over time.
• Agroecology: Terre & Humanisme promotes agroecology as an approach in transitioning towards more sustainable farming practices while training people in its application. The association aims to change production models to achieve higher combined economic, social and environmental production based on the founding principles of Agroecology.
• Applause: Applause is a project led by the city of Ljubljana, Slovenia aiming to find solutions to invasive alien plant species (IAPS) in cities. Ljubljana is applying a zero-waste and circular economy principle to deal with these harmful plant species. Ljubljana is moving from a linear model for managing IAPS to a circular one that is valuable for the entire ecosystem. This process involves six steps: plant identification, biomass harvest, processing & storage, value recovery, final production, and new products & services to market.
• Better Reykjavik: Better Reykjavik is an online platform for the crowdsourcing of solutions to urban challenges launched in May 2010. Better Reykjavik is a co-creation project of the Citizens Foundation, Reykjavik City and its citizens that connects them and improves trust and policy. It’s a platform for crowdsourcing solutions to urban challenges and has multiple democratic functions: Agenda setting, Participatory budgeting and Policymaking. Innovations include unique debating system, crowd-sourcing, submission of multimedia content and extensive use of AI to improve the user experience as well as content submitted.
• Blok 19 Renewal Program: The programme of comprehensive renewal of the historical centre of Zagreb is a pilot project that combines 12 studies on an area of Zagreb called "Blok 19" in order to present the pathway to comprehensive renewal for all of Zagreb’s 168 areas. The idea for the Programme came after the devastating earthquake that hit the City of Zagreb. It was clear that a fast renovation needed to be done, but the city wanted to go a step further and make the renovation inclusive, meaning that not only would the needed renovation be done, but measures for climate change mitigation and adaptation would also be included, which is in line for the energy transition plan for the historic centre of Zagreb until 2050.
• Brainport Smart District (BSD) is a smart city district in the city of Helmond, the Netherlands
• Citizen Collaboration Pacts: Bologna's Participatory Budget and Collaboration Pacts offer a unique model of how structural changes can create the enabling conditions for citizen mobilization around strategic goals by providing pathways for citizen-led (public) value creation. By providing citizens with the right tools and channels to express, deliberate, and co-design goals from the neighborhood level, the city can engage citizens in civic life by allowing them to solve and prioritize their own needs.
• City Experiment Fund: Five cities from across South-Eastern European and Central Asian region embarked on an exploration of a new approach to problem solving, which is rooted in systems thinking. The city councils began designing what are called systems thinking portfolios for urban transformation with the support of UNDP Europe and Central Asia.
• City Studio Program: City Studio is a scientific collaboration programme between cities and universities. Cities work together with university students to design solutions that contribute to sustainable urban transformation through final theses of master's and bachelor's degrees. Students will develop their applied research work, including the design phase of a prototype, with dual mentoring: a university lecturer and a civil servant. Each student receives a scholarship for the duration of their work, which can be financed by the university, the municipality or joint funds
• Clean Cities ClimAccelerator: Clean Cities ClimAcclerator is a 9-month accelerator program targeting startups that help cities achieve climate neutrality, particularly through the use and commercialisation of clean technology. The program is focused on system-level innovations and is demand-led, matching startups in an early phase with challenge-owners.
• Climate Quarter Project: The goal is to create a residential quarter that prevents the necessity to travel more than 15 minutes to get the most essential goods and services, and therefore reduces the amount of carbon emissions related to transport – the key to averting the so-called heat-island effect. An important aspect of the implementation will be the involvement of citizens and the active cooperation of all parties (city units) to discuss about the problems, vision for the Climate Quarter and future interventions.
• Climate Meal: Case Study on the Climate Meal Project by Forum Virium in Helsinki
• Cloughjordan Ecovillage: The Cloughjordan Ecovillage started as a plan to create a community of dedicated environmentalists; to buy a site on which they could build their lives. The very first residents of Ireland's first ecovillage moved into their homes in 2009. Today, with 55 low-carbon homes, a carbon-neutral district heating system, a community farm, a green enterprise centre, a planned reed-bed treatment plant, a photovoltaic power plant, and Ireland’s lowest ecological footprint, the ecovillage is demonstrating different ways to achieve ecological, economic, and social sustainability.
• EcoHouse Antwerp: Ecohouse is a one-stop-shop advice and demonstration center for sustainable building and living run by the City of Antwerp (Belgium). Its focus is on energy reduction and using renewable energy. It is open to the general public, with a substantive part of its work focused on more vulnerable groups. It offers workshops and advice on energy retrofitting, as well as both short and long term solutions for saving energy and money.
• El Día Después:  is a multi-stakeholder platform for networks to address the sustainable development goals, specifically SDG 17. There are four communities within this project: environment & health, cooperation & global governance, city transformation, and inequality & new economic model. Within these groups are experts and professionals from the field who collaborate to create different services towards change. Through these collectives, lessons can be drawn from meetings that can catalyse and accelerate the transition towards models and systems that support cities, the environment, and global governance
• Elektrizitätswerke Schönau (EWS): In the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, a handful of committed citizens in the Black Forest (Germany) decided to create a nuclear-free and coal-free energy supply belonging to citizens. Today the Elektrizitätswerke Schönau (EWS) supplies people throughout Germany with green power and eco-gas and works in various ways towards bringing about the energy revolution.
• Entrepatios Las Carolinas: Entrepatios Las Carolinas is the first ecological co-housing built in the city of Madrid, nearly-zero energy building which operates with the Right of Use of the dwelling, but not ownership of it. It is a nearly zero energy residential building consists of 17 houses, CO2 zero and made of wood, under the Right of Use regime in the Community of Madrid.
• EVA Maakt Het Plantaardings: EVA is a bottom-up initiative that promotes plant-based diets through cooking workshops & awareness. EVA believes that, on average, plant-based products have the greatest overall positive impact on the well-being of people, animals and the planet. Working on a larger scale with restaurants, hospitals and schools through guidance at institutional kitchens will have a large-scale impact.
• Green Squares: The Green Squares project aims to support the local communities in climate action by piloting a model for joint engagement of residents, students, local artists and civil society in a collaborative process of co-designing solutions for neglected urban pockets in line with particular needs of local communities. The goal of the project is for communities to collaboratively design micro public spaces to improve air quality in Niš.
• Just Transition Listening Platform: The Lada and Velilla Social Innovation Platform aims to promote the collaboration between companies, public entities and the population living and working in the region in order to unlock the just transition of the region after the closing down of a thermal coal plant.
• KLIK (Križevci Climate Innovation Laboratory): The energy cooperative Križevci Climate Innovation Laboratory (KLIK), supported by the City Council of Križevci (Croatia), aims to help make Križevci an energy self-sufficient city, but above all to engage citizens in energy transition by empowering citizens to produce and consume their own energy. It works on identifying the needs of the local communities and empowering them through capacity building.
• Local Energy Communities: The City Council of Valencia (Spain) promotes local energy communities by giving legal advice to communities of neighbors, guaranteeing energy access to the most vulnerable people that participate in the energy community. A one-stop-shop provides guidance and training to hundreds of families, addressing the issues of energy billing, energy efficiency, renewable energy and the right to energy.
• Nappi Naapuri (Nifty Neighbor): The purpose of Nappi Naapur is to increase real encounters between people who live close to each other. It is intended for neighborly help, getting to know each other, gig work and promoting the sharing economy. Everyone is welcome to become a user!
• Paris 15-min City: 15-Minute City is an urban plan established by the city of Paris whose goal is to make most daily necessities accomplishable by either walking or cycling from residents' homes in a maximum of 15 minutes.
• PentaHelix: PentaHelix aimed to empower local and regional authorities to find innovative and cost-effective approaches to develop, finance, implement and improve sustainable energy and climate action plans (SECAP) that contribute to reaching national and European climate and energy goals and policies. To achieve this, the PentaHelix project developed and tested a new approach for integrating multi-governance planning for sustainable energy, both horizontal and vertical, together with close interaction with key stakeholders in energy efficiency and sustainable energy solutions.
• Play!UC: Play!UC is an initiative that developed a series of serious games and following participatory processes to raise awareness and deal with the individual carbon footprint of young adults. The term ‘serious games’ can describe all kinds of physical or digital games that are developed and played not only for entertainment, but have a functional scope as well like education, training or exploration.
• Ride Sharing Service: Ride sharing service initiated by local football club PPJ started from an agile pilot and became a permanent activity in the club. After school, school children get transported from school to football training on a minibus. This saves time and reduces the number of total trips otherwise taken by each individual child driven by their [parent]. Lower price of early practice hours compensates the transportation costs.
• Real Junk Food Berlin: Real Junk Food Berlin is part of the international organization The Junk Food Project that aims to raise awareness around the topic of food waste and new sustainable food systems. Their activities include the use of food that would otherwise go to waste and the conduction of workshops and courses sharing ways to avoid food waste.
• SONNET Bristol City Lab: The City Council of Bristol (United Kingdom) established the SONNET City Lab to make use of crowdfunding to collectively raise capital to install energy efficiency measures in local community buildings. The Bristol municipality, working with the Bristol Energy Network, engaged building managers to assess the costs and energy-related savings associated with energy efficiency works in community buildings. They investigated the possibility of using a Community Municipal Bond (CMB) mechanism to fund this work.
• SONNET Mannheim City Lab: The City of Mannheim (Germany) implemented the SONNET City Lab to mobilize citizens of the neighborhood Neckarstadt-West in energy transition efforts. The neighborhood has many residents with a migration background, and where language barriers posed a challenge to the city to engage them. The project implemented pop-up installations and events in public spaces, providing information and facilitating the exchange of ideas for the neighborhood’s energy transition.
• Smart House Training Program: The main goal of the project was to implement a complete solution for a smart and sustainable urban environment, which would inspire residents to make environmentally conscious decisions and would later be implemented in various European regions.
• Superblocks (Vitoria-Gasteiz): The concept of “Superblocks” is an urban innovation that aims at low-carbon mobility following a participatory approach at the city and neighbourhood level. The idea is that the city, at the neighbourhood level, is reorganised into car-free areas that maximise public space for new social uses and keep road traffic outside the neighbourhoods – so called superblocks. Inner streets are redesigned for the primary use by pedestrians.
• SynAthina: SynAthina is a social innovation online platform for engaging members of the community in problem-solving and reform. Citizens and community groups can submit innovative ideas on how to make their city a better place to live in and are then connected to the relevant stakeholders that can support their efforts.
• Viable Cities: Viable Cities is a Swedish strategic innovation programme focusing on the transition to climate-neutral and sustainable cities. Viable Cities aims to create transformative system change based on the mission Climate Neutral Cities 2030 with a good life for everyone within the planetary boundaries. The mission means that cities' climate transition should take place from a broad perspective, where social, ecological and economic sustainability is taken into account.
• You Decide: You Decide is a participatory budget initiative aimed at promoting greater participation of young people and at increasing their contribution to the development of the city.
• Zklaster: ZKlaster is the Cluster for the Development of Renewable Energy Sources and Energy Efficiency in Zgorzelec (Poland). It aims to set up a regional Renewable Energy System (RES) to replace coal mining in the region. Representatives of local authorities in the area signed an agreement and engaged in a multi-stakeholder process with businesses and citizens. The aim of the project is to build an alternative local energy system, using renewable energy sources and high-efficiency generation of heat and electricity simultaneously.

7.Methods to implement social innovation in projects and in cities:

Phase 1 - Analyze the Context

Context Map Canvas: The Context Canvas is a framework used to help understand the context. The template can map out the trends and different perspectives. This brings out drivers outside the organisation and the forces that could shape the project now and in the future.

Ethnographic Fieldnotes: Ethnographic fieldnotes are a tool to organize different observations, types of analysis, emerging questions and reflections, as well as ideas for future action.

Ethnographic Interview: Ethnographic interview is a method used to understand deeply the actions and motivations of people behind a theme or topic of research. This process relies on a close connection between the researcher and the community they are working in. In creating connections the researcher is able to get a more rich understanding of how the community functions and what their motivations towards climate actions are for example, which is reflected in interviews with stakeholders. While it is not likely to help on technical challenges, it will be crucial for community issues and ‘why’ questions.

People and Connections Map: The People & Connections Map is a visualization tool used to identify stakeholders you are trying to reach and how. It is a tool for mapping actors that surround you that could potentially become your partner, user or supporter. These might include people, communities, funders, networks etc. All of them can represent a resource to your innovation and link to your group goal or your innovation.

PESTEL: A PESTEL analysis is a strategic tool coming from marketing used to identify external forces in the environment that faces an organization. By completing the tool, the team analyses the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal forces that make up the external environment.

System Map: System maps (also referred to as stakeholder maps) are schematic representations of the main "actors" of a given (service) system, from the point of view of the main service-providing organization. The actors are made up of those surrounding and those internal to the organization, including users, staff, departments, and external providers.

Observation of Context: Observation of context is a qualitative research tool to help understand context and to show what people do. This tool involves collecting data using one’s senses. It is about getting a perspective or opinion on what is happening, what’s going on, who you’d like to spend more time with. 

Phase 2 – Reframe the Problem

Frameboards: The Frameboard tool is a canvas/template developed by Guido Stompff in 2018 with the aim of enabling both the visualisation and communication resulting from the exploration of a frame. A frame is intended in this case as a certain temporary perspective on a problem or challenge being explored.

Problem Definition: The first stage in developing an effective and efficient response is defining the problem, as what may initially seem to be the problem may be a symptom of an underlying, and potentially larger, issue. The Problem Definition tool enables groups to comprehend what these potential underlying causes are and contextualise the problem to reframe it in a more focused and direct way

Empathy Map: An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what is known about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to create a shared understanding of user needs, and aid in decision making. It helps synthesize observations and draw out unexpected insights. Empathy maps provide a glance into who a user is as a whole through a study of what they speak, think, do and feel about an activity

Scenario-building with backcasting: Scenarios are plausible stories about possible future developments. Backcasting is a method to develop scenarios and explore their feasibility and implications starting from the future towards the present.

5W Technique: The 5W technique is an analysis tool consisting of a series of questions that probe the core qualities and characteristics of a given situation. The 5Ws are who, what, where, when, and why (a sixth component, how, can be sometimes added to the list).

Defining the Challenge with Challenge Map: Designing a challenge is a first step in putting together an innovation competition. In order for the innovation competition to be successful and attract enough audience, a team of organizers should define the main challenge of the competition, how to select winners, judges, what is the selection process along with other details.

Futures Table as a component in scenario building: Futures Table is a method in a scenario process that offers a structured approach to analyse how different variables of a trend, development or change signal may develop in the future.

Phase 3: Envision alternatives

Design the Challenge: Designing a challenge is a first step in putting together an innovation competition. In order for the innovation competition to be successful and attract enough audience, a team of organizers should  define the main challenge of the competition, how to select winners, judges, what is the selection process along with other details.

Idea Card: The Idea Card is a tool coming from Service Design that presents your idea in just one page. The synthetic nature helps you focus on its essential structure: the challenge and needs you are addressing, the solution, what it might achieve and how you will accomplish this.

Impact and Feasibility Analysis: The impact-feasiblity matrix helps teams prioritize and ultimately decide which ideas/projects are worth moving forward, on what timeline and with what effort. By mapping ideas according to how much they are in line with and can achieve set goals (impact) and whether current organizational resources can support them (feasibility), teams can sort ideas between: quick wins, major projects, busy work and resource drains.

KJ Ideation: KJ Ideation is a brainstorming technique, or ‘idea-generating’ method developed by Japanese anthropologist Jiro Kawakita (from which its name derives) to collect, sort and find meaning in qualitative data. As such, it facilitates abductive reasoning that provides rigor to the process of sorting out chaotic ideas and insights to form a hypothesis to confirm or reject.

Value Motivation Matrix: A motivation matrix is an exercise that helps facilitators and designers measure what motivates people. The assumption around the motivation matrix is that people perform actions because they are triggered by motivations. The matrix is composed of six core motivation factors: incentive, achievement, social acceptance, fear, power, and growth.

Pugh Chart: Pugh chart can support comparing a variety of options directly and weighing their different characteristics against each other. By giving weight and importance to the variables, the Pugh Chart considers the specific needs and values of an initiative and can help to make the best decision in a specific situation. Ranking the criteria keep the team’s focus and reveals the best opportunities at an early stage. It can be used to evaluate different product- or service directions as well as a series of funding opportunities or similar.

Value Proposition Canvas: The Value Proposition Canvas is a fairly simple tool that allows you to establish a logical starting point for building and testing a product or service. It is done to create products and services that meet the needs of people. In order to do that it is important to keep track of the target market’s pains, gains, and to-do’s – which are all opportunities for providing value to them.

Motivation Matrix: The Motivation Matrix helps teams understand the connections between the various actors that take part in the solution and adds clarity also to their roles by investigating the motivation behind their action. The tool helps to answer questions regarding the interests of each stakeholder and what their expectation is from their involvement. It is a good strategy tool for partnership managers and network development.

Idea Rating/Selection: After coming up with lots of ideas on how to solve a previously identified problem, it can be difficult to know where to start and which idea to develop. The Idea Selection tool helps mapping out ideas according to their originality and feasibility.

Phase 4: Prototype & Experiment

Customer journey: The customer journey map is a representation describing each step of the interaction that a user or customer has with a service, product, organization or system taking the perspective of the user. It is stated what the actions, the touchpoints with the service, product or system and the emotional state of the user for each of the steps.

Experiment Canvas: An experiment canvas allows for a team or individual to create an experiment for the current time and test out their ideas about a certain issue/topic. This is done through hypothesising the current riskiest assumption there is about an experiment, then a falsifying hypothesis. It is clear and easy way to create an experiment.

Service Blueprint: The Service Blueprint is an operational tool that provides a holistic viewpoint of an organization’s operational processes, e.g. key activities, products, services and points of interaction with the intended audience, stakeholders and beneficiaries. As such, it is a strategic tool useful for planning or improving a service as it demonstrates what is happening along the service line and who is doing what through what means.

Social Business Model Canvas: Visualizing the business model of your idea in a canvas is an effective step towards advancing the concept. It provides the big picture on the processes that ensure that value is created, delivered and captured. The tool is a precursor to drawing up a complete business plan and is useful for formulating in a more rapid and cost-efficient manner the business model behind the idea for the initial phases.

Desktop Walkthrough: A desktop walkthrough helps the design team to quickly simulate a service experience using simple props like toy figurines on a small-scale stage (often built from LEGO bricks or cardboard), and test and explore common scenarios and alternatives. The critical deliverable is not the model of the map/stage but the experience of playing through the service experience step by step.

Experience Prototype: Experience Prototyping is a method of “research through design.” (Wikström, 2015). It is the act of developing “any kind of representation, in any medium, that is designed to understand, explore or communicate what it might be like to engage with the product, space or system [you] are designing.” (Buchenau, 2000).

Phase 5: Evaluate and Scale

Cultural Probes: Cultural probes are a design research method, which are particularly well suited to conduct research with participants on sensitive topics and in personal contexts. They are intended to encourage participants to look beyond relatively well understood needs, into the fuzzier realm of their beliefs, desires and cultural preferences. Unlike direct observation (like usability testing or traditional field studies), the technique allows participants to self-report.

Field Experiment: By utilizing an experimental design, such as A/B testing, users (i.e., citizens) are randomly exposed to different options, then results are compared. The aim is testing which solution is best. For example, when utilizing a service, half of the users are provided one version of the service (intervention A), while the other half of the participants are provided a different version (intervention B). Performance and other data are collected for all users for the two conditions: the best performing solution is then adopted for all.

Most Significant Change: Most Significant Change (MSC) is a participatory monitoring and evaluation method without indicators that consists in collecting stories of change from the field. The stories help understand the complexity and reality of the project in the field and offer a more in-depth picture of progress. More precisely, the method helps identifying relevant field stakeholders, gathering their stories (through interviews, focus groups, or fact sheets), selecting significant ones with precise criteria until higher-levels stakeholders identify the most significant changes.

Outcome Harvesting: Outcome harvesting is a method to identify, formulate then analyse and interpret the outcomes (positive and negative, intended or not) of an initiative. The process is stakeholder-centered and includes 6 steps that are helpful to collect evidence of what has changed for project stakeholders or beneficiaries and work backwards to evaluate whether and how the project has contributed to these changes.

Impact metrics: This paper describes conventional measurement tools and their limitations for evaluating social impact and proposes that developmental evaluation is more suited to evaluating social innovation.

Scaling

Five Configurations for Scaling Up: Academic studies show that the journey from social to institutional entrepreneurship takes different configurations, depending on the initial conditions of the innovative initiatives and obstacles encountered during implementation.

Social innovation observatory: the case of Florianopolis The case outlines a new theoretical–methodological approach for the mapping and analysis of the social innovation ecosystems (SIE) in the city of Florianópolis, Brazil. The study was put into practice through the creation and implementation of a collaborative digital platform.

WHO Framework for setting up a scaling strategy: The framework describes four stages in developing a scaling strategy: clarifying aims and goals for scaling, establishing what to scale up, choosing a route to scale, gearing up to deliver a scaling strategy. The writers identify four common routes for scaling-up: influence and advise; build a delivery network; form strategic partnerships and grow an organisation to deliver. Each route has a different focus and activities however, social innovators often pursue more than one strategy; some organisations use all four routes to scale

Levers of a Sustainable City: Levers of a Sustainable City is a scaling model to accelerate the adoption of good sustainable practices in municipalities. It aims at turning means that have proven to work well into concrete action. The model consists of several interconnected methods and of a typology of scaling activities.

Scale up out deep: In this article by Moore, Riddell and Vocisano, it is argued that the process of scaling social innovations to achieve systemic impacts involves three different types of scaling—scaling out, scaling up, and scaling deep—and large systems change (LSC) is likely to require a combination of these types. The findings focus on the phenomenon of scaling, and the strategies by which actors can move social innovation impacts across scales.

Social Innovation Canada: Social Innovation Canada is a network that aims to fortify the innovation ecosystem by providing an operational model that offers information, tools, skills, and a network for developing social innovations. By utilizing this model, practitioners can collaborate effectively, build stronger connections, align their efforts, enhance their capacity, and advance their knowledge in the field of social innovation.

TACSI: The Australian Centre for Social Innovation strives to enhance social and economic well-being through their approach to accelerate social innovations. The organization has conducted experiments in the field of human-centered innovation, driven by the belief that individuals are the best experts in their own lives. By collaborating with those affected by the challenges they aim to address, TACSI creates effective innovations.

8.Social Innovation assessment: process and outcome indicators:

NZC Comprehensive indicator framework, including social innovation indicators (see Appendix)
NZC catalogue of social innovation indicators

9.NZC Deliverables on Social Innovation:

10.NZC Scientific Publications on Social Innovation: