Presentation by Nesta CEO Geoff Mulgan at the Digital Social Innovation workshop, Brussels, February 3rd 2014

1. Digital social innovation:
policy workshop
Geoff Mulgan

2. What policy changes could
advance digital social innovation?

4. 1. Making it easier to
create new digital SI (eg
regulatory, funding &c)
Labs, pilots, incubators
2.Making it easier to grow
and spread digital SI ( eg
social investment, public
purchasing and
procurement, standards
3. Increasing the
potential value of
digital SI (eg making
available open data,
ubiquitous broadband)
4. Enabling the radical,
disruptive innovations
emerging from digital SI –
new approaches to money,
consumption, education,
health

5. Policy goals
• Making it easier to create new digital SI (eg regulatory,
funding &c)
• Making it easier to grow and spread digital SI(eg public
procurement, support for evidence generation,
common standards)
• Increasing the potential value of digital SI (eg making
available open data, ubiquitous broadband)
• Enabling some of the radical, disruptive innovations
emerging from digital SI – new approaches to money,
consumption, education, health

6. The spread of social
innovation support ...
Parks (Bilbao, Singapore)
Exchanges (SIX &c)
Camps (globally)
Funds (Australia, Hong Kong,France)
Government teams (Colombia to UK)
Incubators (several hundred)
Offices (eg White House)
Mayors (eg Seoul)
Prizes (US, Europe, China..)
Labs (Chile to Netherlands)
Corporate programmes (Vodafone, Danone, HP)
Consultancy units (McKinsey, Deloitte …)

8. POLICY TOOLS ….
• DIRECT PROVISION - eg broadband infrastructure
• DIRECT COMMISSIONING – eg online health
platforms, public procurement
• DIRECT FUNDING - eg grant aid, early stage, on
going etc, challenge prizes
• INVESTMENT – eg direct investment, co-funding of
funds, wholesale investment;
• INFORMATION - provision of information online
open data; administrative data
• PARTNERSHIPS - PPPs, PFIs, buildings, infrastructure,
tech development

9. • TAXES &c (eg recycling money from the big
aggregators)
• CHARGES (eg for data reuse)
• SUBSIDIES (eg for start-ups)
• TRADEABLE PERMITS, QUOTAS (eg locally
produced media content)
• REGULATION (eg opening up public services to
competition)
• LAW (eg prohibitions on child pornography on
the internet, rights of identity)

10. Some examples
• Funding provision for incubators, growth
funds, experimental zones
• Marketplaces for adoption, exchange
• Common markets
• Showcases, testbeds, cities as laboratories

11. Who can act? Different levels of
governance …

12. What is your policy idea?
10 Minutes !
20 Minutes !
Spend 10 minutes working
on your policy idea using
the card ‘idea card’
We will work together on
going from 68 great ideas
to a cluster of ‘idea
themes’ for us to vote on
during lunch.

13. Thinking about your idea, be clear ...
1. Who could implement
it (European Commission,
national governments,
municipal …)?
3. Does it need money?
2. Who will benefit?
What are the barriers,
enemies?
4. What work needs to be
done to flesh it out?

14. Getting to 10 themes for the working
groups
You each have three dot
votes, (the little blue
stickers on your desk).
During lunch vote on the
clustered themes on the
wall. Feel free to give all
three votes to one theme
or spread the votes across
three different themes.
After lunch we will take
the 10 clusters with the
most votes and assign
them two themes to each
of the five working
groups.