Open social innovation: the civic organization as a platform

Ismael Peña-López

School of Law and Political Science, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona,

Spain

ipena@uoc.edu

Av. Carl Friedrich Gauss, 5

08860 Castelldefels

Spain

Paper submitted to Information Technology for Development, special issue on

Conceptualizations of Development in ICT4D.

DRAFT 2015/11/11. PLEASE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

Open social innovation: the civic organization as a platform

In the last few years, at least two small revolutions have taken place in the world

of innovation and civic action. The first is something that has shaken not only the

field of innovation, but all of society in general: the revolution caused by the

impact of Information and Communication Technologies, leading to what in civic

action has been labelled as ICT4D. The second, which is partly due to the first,

may be observed in the innovation that is taking place in “non-formal” areas of

innovation, with a special emphasis on collective organization and action. This

paper offers a brief appraisal of concepts such as innovation, open innovation and

social innovation, prior to a definition of the main characteristics and components

of open social innovation. There will be a particular focus on open social

innovation in the field of extra-representative or extra-institutional politics,

linking this analysis with discussion of social movements, cyberactivism and

technopolitics.

Keywords: open innovation; social innovation; technopolitics; ICT4D

Subject classification codes: include these here if the journal requires them

Innovation, open innovation, social innovation

Innovation, open innovation, social innovation, open development... is there such a

thing as open social innovation? Is it related to open development? In other words, is

there any type of innovation in the field of civic action that is open, that shares protocols

and processes and, above all, outcomes? Or better still, is there a collectively created

strongly innovative civic action whose outcomes are aimed at collective appropriation

leading to endogenous development?

Innovation

On the subject of innovation, it would be difficult to avoid referring to Joseph A.

Schumpeter, who in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1943; 82-83) wrote:

“The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion

comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or

transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that

capitalist enterprise creates”.

In the aforementioned work and in Business Cycles: a Theoretical, Historical and

Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (Schumpeter, 1939), Schumpeter stated

that innovation would necessarily spell the end of many existing processes, and that

entire enterprises and industries would be destroyed with the arrival of new ways of

doing things, as a side effect of innovation. Among others, this creative destruction

would come from the following sources:

• A new good or service in the market (e.g. tablets vs. PCs).

• A new method of production or distribution of already existing goods or services

(e.g. music streaming vs. CDs).

• Opening new markets (e.g. smartphones for elderly users).

• Access to new sources of raw materials (e.g. thanks to fracking).

• The creation of a new monopoly or the destruction of an existing one (e.g.

Google search engine).

However, as may be deduced from Schumpeter’s proposals, his concept of

innovation is limited to a highly specific dual environment: the environment of the

company and, to be precise, the closed environment of the company. Thus, it is clear

that Schumpeter refers to the appropriation of the outcome of innovation by an

institution that works in competition with others, and that the advantage it obtains from

this innovation lies, to a large extent, in its capacity to appropriate the benefits of the

innovation to the detriment of its competitors. Competitors which, if it can, it will

destroy.

Is it possible, however, for this innovation to take place in the open, while

maintaining the appropriation for private uses?

Open innovation

One of the principal driving forces behind the concept of open innovation is Henry W.

Chesbrough. The author suggests (2003a) that ideas can circulate inside and outside the

company, from the company to society and from society back to the company, in such a

way that in this circulation they become immersed in new elements and transforming

approaches. In a highly successful summary (2003b), which has become very popular in

academic and business management literature, Chesbrough contrasts the characteristics

of traditional and open innovation:

Principles of closed innovation Principles of open innovation

The smart people in our field work for us.

Not all the smart people in our field work

for us. We need to work with smart people

inside and outside our company.

To profit from R&D, we must discover it,

develop it and ship it ourselves.

External R&D can create significant value;

internal R&D is needed to claim some

portion of that value.

If we discover it ourselves, we will get it to

market first.

We don’t have to originate the research to

profit from it.

If we create the most and the best ideas in

the industry, we will win.

If we make the best use of internal and

external ideas, we will win.

We should control our intellectual

property, so that our competitors don’t

profit from our ideas.

We should profit from others’ use of our

intellectual property, and we should buy

others’ intellectual property whenever it

advances our own business model.

Table 1: Contrasting Principles of Closed and Open Innovation (2003b, 38)

Conceptually, Chesbrough’s approach is radically opposed to that of

Schumpeter. The question of inside and outside, of what is one’s own or someone

else’s, is not a formal, but a fundamental question: it represents a complete break with

an operational model that is strongly rooted in the culture of the industrial age, of the

intermediary as minimizing transaction costs and maximizing output from limited

inputs; of efficacy and efficiency based on competition. Although Chesbrough does not

leave aside competition, competitiveness is redefined not in relation to internal

efficiency, but to efficiency in relation to others, in relation to change management and

not to management of something static, investment. Whereas Schumpeter refers to

capital as stock, Chesbrough refers to capital as flow: infrastructure versus knowledge.

The question that is immediately raised is whether, then, there is room for

innovation in the field of not-for-profit organizations or, going one step further, in the

field of society as a corpus or as a general demos? Is it possible to combine social

innovation with the new paradigm of open innovation? Can we find a Chesbroughian

model in which civic actions of a non-competitive nature are able to adopt the

collaborative model of open innovation?

Social innovation

Social innovation can be described as those practices that transform collective action

while strengthening civil society. Thus it has two important components: the

transformation of action that is collective – and, therefore, not private or closed within

the company – and the global benefit of its transformation, once again, in opposition to

appropriation by just a small group of citizens.

Ethan Zuckerman (2008) proposes the following “innovation test” in the field of

social innovation and development facilitated by Information and Communication

Technologies for Development (ICT4D):

(1) Innovation comes from constraint.

(2) Innovation fights hegemonic culture.

(3) Innovation embraces market mechanisms.

(4) Innovation is built on existing platforms.

(5) Innovation comes from close observation of the target environment.

(6) Innovation focuses more on what you have than on what you lack.

(7) Innovation is based on a principle of “infrastructure begets infrastructure”.

Although Zuckerman’s model has a strong technological component – and

perhaps, therefore, it has a certain bias towards the culture of engineering – it does

provide a very satisfactory explanation of how a number of social innovations in the

field of civil rights have functioned lately, e.g. the Spanish Indignados or 15M

movement (Toret, 2013; Peña-López et al., 2013).

The same continuity of participation axis that runs from technopolitics and

hacktivism to clicktivism (Peña-López, 2013a) can, for example, be explained almost

point by point in Zuckerman’s terms. Of course, there are some terms that need to be

changed or qualified. Thus “market mechanisms” refers not so much to the dynamics of

exchange of goods and services, but rather to the dynamics of political deliberation and

negotiation characteristic of democracy among the three powers of governance, the

media and citizens. Furthermore, the “existing platforms” are not so much technological

as democratic, since the simile can be adapted to agoras where collective action takes

place, e.g. parliaments, assemblies, civic centres... or the street itself. “Infrastructure

that begets infrastructure” is obviously one of the main cries from many of the revolts

that have occurred between the Arab Spring and the present: the virtuous circle of more

democratic quality to improve participation, in order to have better democracy.

Open social innovation

The question is, then: can we try to find a model that comprehends all the

aforementioned approaches? And, most importantly, how can we create a model of

social innovation that is open, given the nature of civic organizations?

It is worth clarifying at this point that we are not referring to innovation that

takes place in not-for-profit organizations. Despite its specific and special

characteristics (Rodríguez Blanco et al., 2013), the latter is still innovation that derives

directly from Schumpeter’s conception. Of course, the fact that it is not for profit, but

aims at social transformation makes it different in the context of business innovation.

However, with respect to their forms, many similarities can be observed.

What this reflection wishes to stress here is not only the social transformation in

itself, but the transformation of the social fabric, in the same way that Chesbrough’s

open innovation influences the business fabric, not only the transformation of the

production of certain goods and services.

To underline this difference, let us examine the difference between social

innovation – understood as innovation that has an impact on the social fabric, not as

innovation in the not-for-profit sector – and innovation that takes place in the private

for-profit sector:

(1) The first and most obvious difference is that for-profit innovation has an

imperious need to capture and capitalize on the benefits of innovation. In

contrast, social innovation can “automatically” appropriate the innovation that

has taken place socially, by socializing it or collectivizing it, or by introducing it

into not-for-profit organizations which, duly empowered, will make use of it.

(2) The second and key difference is that (in general) the most important aspect of

for-profit innovation is the outcome. In contrast, in social innovation (in general)

much greater importance is attached to the process followed in order to achieve

the goal than to the achievement of the goal in itself. Often, it is the new truly

transforming processes and protocols or the new perspectives that become an

“engine” of innovation (Brugué et al., 2013).

Particular emphasis must be placed on this last point, because it represents a

marked contrast with other approaches focused on the private not-for-profit sector.

Following this line of thought, open social innovation could be defined as the

creative destruction whose aim is to construct new processes that can be appropriated by

the whole of civil society. This open social innovation can be found behind some

interesting transformations that have taken place recently in the field of social

movements, online participation, electronic democracy, digital commons, P2P practices,

hacktivism and artivism, etc.

Next, brief consideration will be made of the characteristics of this open social 

innovation, outlining the policies and initiatives that it could accommodate. First, 

however, let us look at some characteristics of participation – understood in a very 

broad sense – and how these have changed with the transition from an industrial 

paradigm to an informational paradigm (Peña‐López, 2002; Peña‐López, 2007; Peña‐

López, 2009; Albaigès, 2011). 

Characteristics

In a world under the industrial paradigm, the scarcity of goods (materials) and

extremely high transaction costs have led to the appearance of large and strong

intermediaries who, under their own roof (quite literally) have managed to create

organizations that gather resources (infrastructures – human, material and financial)

with a view to optimizing their processes and achieving the maximum efficiency and

effectiveness. This central role of intermediation has had the effect that, if not all, most

institutions created or reinvented after the industrial revolution characteristically have a

participation that is long-term or pursuing lengthy projects, they are almost always

started up collectively (or until a certain critical mass is reached), and they have a

strongly directed operation, in which most of the components operate in reaction to the

orders of this management.

The revolution of knowledge and the change at all levels that this has produced

in terms of organization (Mokyr, 1997; Mokyr, 2000) have undermined these

foundations on which the industrial institutions were built. Following the practical

disappearance of the concept of scarcity in information-based goods, in addition to the

drastic fall in transaction costs, participation has gone from having the three

aforementioned characteristics to moving along three axes which have these

characteristics at one end and their opposite at the other (Figure 1: Axes of participation,

from the industrial paradigm to the informational paradigm).

[Figure 1: Axes of participation, from the industrial paradigm to the informational paradigm HERE] 

Figure 1: Axes of participation, from the industrial paradigm to the informational

paradigm

What characteristics do these other extremes have?

• Decentralization. Open social innovation allows proactive participation,

opposing but at the same time completing directed and reactive participation.

For this to be possible, separation of the content from the container must first

have taken place, or, what amounts to the same thing, separation of the function

from the institution.

• Individualization. Open social innovation makes individual participation

possible, especially at the origin of innovative or transforming participation.

This does not mean that collective participation is suboptimal or that it must be

avoided, but that individuals have much more flexibility to begin processes

individually – which does not of course change the fact that the impact on a

large scale will surely depend on the degree of attachment to an original

initiative. This flexibility is only possible thanks to the fragmentation of

processes and responsibilities, a high degree of granularity of tasks (Benkler,

2006) and the total separation of roles (Raymond, 1999).

• Casual participation. Open social innovation facilitates “casual” participation,

“just in time” participation, participation at the time and in the place where they

are needed, not necessarily participation that is long-term and with a timeframe

of accomplishment a long time hence. This can materialize thanks to the drastic

lowering of the costs of participation, including the fall in transaction costs,

thereby making it possible for many players to add their support to different

innovative approaches.

Policies and actions

How can we foster decentralization, individualization and casual participation? How

can we separate the content from the container? How can we fragment processes, make

granularity possible? How can we lower participation costs and transaction costs?

First, let us consider some examples:

• m-Pesa, the electronic bank launched in East Africa, began with mobile phone

users paying for goods and services exchanged with each other using the balance

on their mobile phone cards, and only much later came in financial institutions

(Batchelor, 2012).

• Wikipedia1, although it was established by a private foundation, operates thanks

to the patronage of different players with varying involvements and degrees of

initiative, such as librarians, editors and end users, in addition to a constellation

of initiatives that use the contents of the encyclopaedia in hundreds of different

ways and formats.

• The Arab Spring, especially in Egypt, burst into life encouraging the coexistence

of two types of terrain: institutional terrain, with the mass media pushing the

problem on to the public agenda, and extra-institutional terrain, generating

content from squares and virtual platforms (Howard et al., 2011; Lotan, 2011).

• The initiative 15MpaRato2, a global paradigm, provided an example of an

unusual combination of media for the purpose of bringing together players of all

kinds and origins under a single banner: promoters, opinion leaders through

social networks and traditional communication media, financers through

crowdfunding, bank customers and shareholders, and professionals from the

field of law.

• The Ushahidi platform also used decentralization, initiative and granularity to

convert a “mere” technological platform into a powerful tool that all kinds of

1 wikipedia.org

2 15mparato.wordpress.com

2 15mparato.wordpress.com

players use collaboratively for actions that range from the observation of

elections to planning the logistics of humanitarian aid in crisis zones (Zook et

al., 2010).

All these examples, characterized by a high level of proactivity, flexibility in

individual participation, and the granularity that opens the door to all types of

contributions, have, in the view of this writer, three broad types of driving force or

policy behind them.

• Providing context. First of all, open social innovation has no place unless one

of the players or a combination of these facilitates an understanding of the

framework where action is being taken, identifying the maximum number of

players, pinpointing needs, listing the possible channels through which progress

may be made, and in particular, highlighting the trends that affect or will affect

collective decision-making.

• Facilitating a platform. It is not, then, a case of creating a platform, or a new

meeting point, or a space, but rather gathering the important players around an

initiative. It is a question of identifying this hub, this forum, this network and

contributing towards putting it into operation or maintaining it in movement.

Sometimes it will be a genuine platform, while at others it will be a question of

finding the platform that already exists and joining in with its development, or

helping to attract certain players to these spaces, or simply enabling these

players to meet at a particular point.

• Fuelling interaction. This is about avoiding making the mistake of “let’s build

it and they’ll come” (Sayo et al., 2004; Schware, 2005; Lilleker & Jackson,

2008; Hatakka, 2009; OECD, 2010). Interaction must be fostered and promoted,

but without interferences which may go against a leadership that is decentralized

and distributed. Generally, content will be king in this terrain. Not any content,

but content that has been filtered, established, contextualized and, above all, well

put together (Berners-Lee, 2010).

The relative costs of participation in civic action

Having made the aforesaid analysis of open social innovation, what is the role that this

can play in civic action, be this institutional or extra-representative participation? The

reflection it is aimed to make in this third part is that open social innovation must

indeed be able to open doors where participation was forbidden, making this

participation accessible on the basis of lowering its relative costs.

When an analysis is made, on the one hand, of disaffection with political

institutions and, on the other hand, of participation in informal fields (Peña-López,

2013a), one of the apparent paradoxes is the following:

• On the one hand, participating directly in civic action has a cost (in money,

sometimes, in time, always), as a result of which citizens do not participate and

justification is made of the need for parties, trade unions or any other institution

forming part of representative democracy.

• On the other hand, with respect to certain issues, citizens do participate,

mobilize themselves and take up the reins, even with great intensity sometimes.

So what should be concluded from this? Is there or isn’t there participation? Are the

political parties and the trade unions “needed”?

In all probability, the two perspectives are essentially two sides of the same coin. It is

not the coin with the costs or the benefits of participating in civic action, but with the

relative costs or the marginal benefits of this participation. That is to say, if it is worth

participating, because it is expected that the benefits of involvement will be greater than

the cost of the time devoted, people participate; if it is not worth it, because the barriers

to participation are high and little or nothing is expected in return, people place their

trust in (or resign themselves to the actions of) the elected representatives, or they

simply abstain or cast a blank vote.

How to foster participation

When laws, regulations, participation plans, plans for promoting civic action or any

other customary tool in the field of civic participation are debated, planned and drafted,

it is often done on the basis of bureaucratizing activities or tasks that already existed

informally. Bureaucratize in the sense of formalizing and cultivating practices to

supposedly promote these, policies aimed at form, without changing the content. In an

exercise aimed not at form, but content, and from a perspective of open social

innovation, there are at least two paths to explore when introducing these policies to

foster participation, and more so now that citizens have powerful tools for informing

and deliberating without the need to turn to intermediaries, as we have seen in the

decentralization-individualization-casual collective action model.

(1) Lowering the costs of participation. This would appear to be elementary, but it

is not. Beyond the creation and announcement of trilateral commissions

including public administration, civil society and economic interest groups,

fostering participation may be as easy as making all the information available to

the parties involved swiftly, veraciously and in time. Lowering the cost of

getting information, for example, automatically causes the benefit/cost ratio of

participation to go up, without the need to have to make tiresome participation

plans and projects. Providing a residents association, an assembly or a local

NGO with premises is also lowering the cost of participation, without the need

to have to make tiresome participation plans and projects. Establishing stable

and “automated” mechanisms to prospect for and gather the needs and demands

of citizens (instead of, for example, the via crucis of a popular legislative

initiative) is, without doubt, lowering the cost of participation, without the need

to have to make tiresome participation plans and projects. In short, the

application of open social innovation criteria to the costs of participation may

contribute to a great extent to lowering these and, consequently, to making the

relative benefit higher.

(2) Increasing the benefits of participation. On the other side of the cost/benefit

ratio we find increasing the benefits. This does not mean that each and every one

of the demands made by each and every citizen has to be unconditionally

accepted. It simply means that the probability that they will be listened to or

taken into account will not be as low as it usually is. The popular legislative

initiative (PLI) mentioned earlier is a textbook example: it is inconceivable that,

for no apparent reason, a PLI that meets all the formal requirements should not

even be allowed to proceed. If the perspective is that civic action will not serve

any purpose following the resources invested, the perceived benefits will never

be greater than the actual costs incurred. Once again, creating contexts,

providing forums or fostering participation on the basis of rich information can

increase the perception that the benefits of participating will be higher than the

costs of doing so. And, probably, it will not just be a perception, given that the

ground covered to make the open social innovation possible will, in itself, have

considerable social value when it comes to opening and sharing protocols.

It goes without saying that many initiatives of transparency, open data and open

government could contribute to lowering the relative cost or increase the marginal

benefits of participation. Beyond their necessary (but sometimes obsessive and

exclusive) attention to accountability, integral consideration of the political process

(informing, deliberating, negotiating) would have the effect that instead of attacking the

symptoms of low participation, the underlying causes would be addressed.

It would be erroneous to state that laws, regulations and plans for participation

and transparency are not necessary. Nevertheless, if these continue to be considered in

little pieces and from top to bottom, their scope will always be very limited. And their

legitimacy even more so.

Changing the design of institutions in order not to participate

There is a third approach to improving participation, or rather, to arresting the problem

of low participation: making it irrelevant.

Making it irrelevant has nothing to do with an apparently similar, but essentially

very different strategy, that of making the citizen irrelevant. That is to say, “politics

should be left to politicians”, “that’s very complicated and citizens won’t understand it”,

“that’s politics with a capital P”, etc., which, in essence, are other ways to open the door

to corruption and the perversion of justice.

In 2002, in Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government 

Should Work, John R. Hibbing and Elisabeth Theiss-Morse suggested that, deep down,

when things are going well, what citizens want is to be left in peace. They do not even

want to hear the word participation. In a kind of replica from a Spanish perspective

entitled ¿”Democracia sigilosa” en España? Preferencias de la ciudadanía española 

sobre las formas de decisión política y sus factores explicativos, Joan Font et al. (2012)

qualified this assertion. Yes, in general, the average citizen wants to be left in peace

with all this talk about participation, but with one proviso: that the institutions are

designed in such a way that the result of their decisions and actions is guaranteed to be

legitimate and fair. Or, expressed in another way: citizens want to participate, but not

the whole time (due to the costs and the benefits mentioned earlier); they want to

participate where it matters, which is in institutional design.

If we go back a little, this is in fact what the 15M movement was demanding on

the streets and what it continues to demand in assemblies and in some initiatives to

relaunch parties: a single proposal for a better democracy (Alcazan et al., 2012;

Monterde et al., 2013).

Many laws, regulations and plans for participation and transparency originate

from what is a fallacy: that institutions are what they are and there is no escaping this

narrow margin of action; its framework is unchangeable and all action has to be limited

to this context set in stone. However, there is a great difference between what can be

done and what could or should be done in politics. Many of the debates on low

participation, on the cost or the potential benefits of participating would probably be

quashed if the option of institutional reform were to emerge, as well as the option of a

change in protocols, processes and conducts of collective action, whether or not this is

steered by institutions.

This is precisely the line taken by the examples, characteristics and model of

open social innovation that we have shown.

Toolbox civic action

Modern democratic institutions have focused on providing solutions or ways round the

problems and demands of citizens. On the basis of representing and capturing their

sensibilities, before turning them into political proposals, citizens have been able to

retire to the background knowing that someone was working for them in the public,

collective arena.

Leaving aside other considerations, this policy has worked (or rather, in general

it works), because it provided the opportunity to keep an eye on public matters 24 hours

a day, 7 days a week, and on a large scale. In other words, when the political arena is no

longer a Greek polis with just a few inhabitants, taking direct responsibility for civic

action becomes prohibitive, in terms of both material resources and, above all, time.

The Information and Communication Technologies, with Internet as the

figurehead, enable individuals to reappropriate collective action, reduce intermediation,

analyse the power of representatives and elected officials, organize their own platforms,

energize their own interest groups, and convene their own demonstrations and events.

The outcome can be seen on a daily basis, albeit at a breakneck speed. Politics

2.0, technopolitics, politics in social networks, social movements, network parties,

network movements, hacktivism, cyberpolitics, cyberactivism... all these are concepts

that we have coined to refer to ways of doing politics and civic action that belong to the

same sub-species: the one that, firmly based on citizens of flesh and blood and paved

squares and tarmac, has managed to increase its impact and organizational efficiency

thanks to technology.

Do people miss traditional politics on the street? Of course.

Is this easy to understand and explain? Not at all.

Right now, we are experiencing a transition from politics as a goal to politics as

a process, from the institution as a solution to the institution as a toolbox – when we say

institution, this could perfectly cover parliament, party, trade union, NGO, residents’

association... toolbox civic action is “do it yourself”, political DIY, it is arranging to

meet the neighbours to draw, saw and assemble some (democratic) furniture, each

person with their own tools, instead of buying the furniture ready made. This is the type

of civic action that some people – coordinated by their networks – are promoting on the

streets (Castells, 2012).

Toolbox civic action requires an extraordinary shift in mindset:

• To begin with, brands fall by the wayside, for it is the tools rather than the

toolbox that matter, tools that can be exchanged and recombined.

• It also requires citizens themselves to play a more prominent role, accustomed as

they are (on the whole) to finding things done, done by others.

• Furthermore, this more prominent role requires competence, knowing how to do

things, or learning how to do them. Doing the new civic action has to be learnt.

• And so the circle is closed, coming back to the toolbox: not only the ability to do

is important, but also the ability to choose the right tools for each case.

Explaining this is complicated. And understanding it, given the speed at which

everything is happening, in spite of the powerful inertia of tradition, is even more

complicated. The desire to roll up one’s sleeves, to reassume the responsibility

incumbent on us as citizens, this must be requested with considerable tact.

Citizens and new forms of civic organization must make an effort to speak the

same language and to reach a mutual understanding. In the end, they are the same.

Between them, there are the traditional institutions. Now, their role of intermediation is

more necessary than ever... although the effort that they have to make is much greater,

in order, perhaps, to move into the background. These institutions will also have to be

asked with considerable tact.

Open social innovation, institutional politics and civic activism

Let us ponder for a moment on the role of some NGOs, political parties, trade unions,

governments, associations, mass media, universities and schools.

It has often been said that most, if not all, of these institutions will perish with

the change of paradigm towards a Network Society or a Knowledge Society. It is

probably not particularly outspoken at this juncture to say that all of them will undergo

a radical change and become very different from how we currently see these

institutions. But will they disappear?

While there will certainly be fewer and fewer opportunities for universities and

schools to “educate”, it is plausible that impressively broad prospects for “facilitating

and fostering learning” will be opened up. Thus we can foresee that educational

institutions will have an important role to play in building contexts, providing learning

platforms (not necessarily in the technological sense of the word) and sparking

interaction between learners and experts (involving everyone). This is known as

learning to learn.

What will happen to democratic institutions? Let us boldly assert that they will

not have a bright future in leading and providing ingenious solutions to the problems of

each and every citizen. However, it is possible that many would like to see them playing

a key role as constructors of contexts, facilitators of platforms and catalysts of

interaction. This is known as open government (Lathrop & Ruma, 2010).

And the same applies to not-for-profit organizations of any kind. Rather than

solving problems, if they turn towards a model of open social innovation, they will tend

to help citizens go beyond empowerment and achieve total governance of themselves

and institutions, through socio-economic development and objective choice, a change of

values and emancipative values, and democratization and civil liberties (Welzel et al.,

2003).

This is one of the scenarios that we could witness in the next few years in many

public and private not-for-profit institutions. They will probably no longer have many of

their current powers and, consequently, they will appear to be less useful according to

the organizational parameters by which we evaluate them at present. But they are also

likely to be playing a crucial role in the knowledge society, where innovation will be

open and social, or it will not be innovation.

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