On October, 21st Master in Servce Design hosted a very special guest, Prof. Ezio Manzini, international design theorist and pioneer of service discipline. His contribution, named People-as-asset. Collaborative services in the age of networks and sustainability, dealt with social innovation in the age of digital technologies.
Supported by digital technologies new forms of organization are emerging, such as: mutual help networks in health or elderly care, new food cooperatives, new mobility systems, collaborative housing initiatives, neighborhood associations to solve different kinds of local problems, … the list could continue. These emerging collaborative organizations, considered as a whole, are the result of a huge wave of social innovation: new ideas emerging in everyday life, which are capable of solving individual and social problems (and to do it in a socially valuable way).
Moving from this observation the lecture articulated two main questions: how collaborative organizations are changing the traditional idea of service? What service design can do to trigger and support them?
These questions are meaningful because the experience done until now in this filed shows us the need to radically re-think the notion of “service”. The starting point of this re-thinking process is the simple but revolutionary idea that users can (also) be considered as an asset. That is, that people –individuals and communities- can (also) become active and collaborative partners in the service production and delivery. Therefore, in this new framework, the age of network and sustainability, service design main role is to trigger and support these collaborative organizations. That is, to empower people’s capabilities in facing their everyday life problems and, at the same time, in creating the bases for a new civilization.
As follows some pictures of the lecture…See you on November 27th for the next open lecture with Mark Vanderbeeken, Senior Partner at Experientia.
