| Dec. 4th. 2006 - Chairman Robin Rowland visiting Politecnico di Milano Social Innovation Exchange between Global Links Initiative and Dis-Indaco
In the afternoon, Mr. Rowland took a lecture for the students to introduce Global Links Initiative and his experiences in grassroots social innovation. The lecture was given in an interactive way.
Professors and students from different countries exchanged many opinions with Mr. Rowland on GLI and social innovation. Here we list some interesting issues among them. 1. Prof. Manzini said it's meaningful if we could have a look at different cases of social innovation all over the world. After observation, we found that many ideas of European cases also exist in other areas, such as group purchase, time bank and so on. But in different local places, the cases with the same ideas have their own different local solutions. GLI supplies a platform to inspire and encourage each other between different local areas. 2. Prof Manzini was anxious that if more and more stories are supplied to GLI, the information management would be a challenge to keep them effective for readers. Otherwise, it would be not easy to readers to find the cases they really want to know about because there is too much noisy information. Mr. Rowland said they are already thinking about this problem and looking at new solutions to GLI's success.
3. Some students from developing countries were also doubtful of the availability of GLI in those rural areas without internet where more people need new ideas and help since GLI is mainly an internet platform. Mr. Rowland emphasized that GLI is not only a platform for the individuals, but also a network for those organizations which are engaged in social innovation and promote the development of poverty area and people. This means we work through our networkers and their organizations who are the ones helping genuine grassroots needs.Additionally GLI is already providing a service to publicise the needs of some of the poorest grassroots community, whereby we create their own public website for them relating to publicity of their needs. This has been received very well and was, Mr Rowland felt, reflected in the amazing receptions which he and Libby Brayshaw received the previous week in India when they visited some of the poorest villages in India. 4. It was also put forward that if there would be new branches/version of new language in another country, how would GLI organize the work and what support could GLI provide. Mr. Rowland answered that GLI had very deliberately created a website structure and management system which was easy to use and did not require computer expertise. GLI only worked where our networkers wanted us to work and most of the work related to the acquisition and translation of materials provided by the networkers. This work was normally carried out willingly by volunteers who are only too happy to be able to help with the creation of a GLI website in their own language and useful to their own country or groups of countries e.g. French speaking African countries. GLI was very happy with the progress it has made so far in its short life.
After lecture, Mr. Rowland was invited to have dinner together with Prof. Manzini and other staff to exchange more and discuss the possible collaboration in future. Prof. Manzini introduced researching experiences and situations on the topic of sustainable design and social innovation in Dis-INDACO (Design and innovation for sustainability) which are supposed a most active academic base on sustainable design in world. There were several projects on this topic and also collected many cases of creative communities. And there also an open-data internet platform 'sustainable everyday' ( see website link opposite) to save and share the emerging cases. This exchange visiting was successful to create a bridge between two organizations which have world wide influences in practice and research separately on social innovation. We believe there should be more exchange and cooperation between them to promote the social innovation. Written by Lara Penin, Miaosen Gong Introduction of Prof. Ezio Manzini: In the past, he has been Director of the Domus Academy in Milano and Chair Professor of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In the 2006 he has been nominated Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts at The New School of New York. His works are based on strategic design and design for sustainability, with a focus on the scenario building and solution development. He has been involved in several international commissions, expert panels and working groups. His recent and current research activities are: HiCS, Highly Customerised Solutions, within the Growth Programme of the European Community (2001- 2004); EMUDE, Emerging User Demands, within the VI Framework Programme of the European Community (2004-2006); SCORE, Sustainable Consumption Research Exchanges, within the VI Framework Programme of the European Community (2005 - 2007); LOLA, looking for likely alternatives, within the framework of the EU CCN, Consumer Citizens Network(2005-2006). Some relevant results of his recent research activities have been edited in the books: Manzini, E., Jegou, F., Sustainable everyday, Edizioni Ambiente, Milano, 2003, and Leong B.D., Manzini, E (2006) Design Vision : a Sustainable Way of Living in China, Ningnan Publishing House Ltd., China and in several papers (some of them can be found in the Research papers link opposite). Address |
