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.