We are just come to the last one day lecture on Service Design to close the cycle of in depth lessons, that gave the students a vocational training to enter the world of work. Today Anna Meroni held an exiting lecture on Sharing and collaborative services, discussing with the students on the best practices within both the private and the public sector.
Students have already investigated sharing and collaborative services as a specific and emergent family of services, understanding that they share the common trait of being the result of co-creation and/or co-production with the beneficiaries (being them users, clients or stakeholders). Today they had the chance to explore also their aim of achieving a positive social impact that means producing an outcome good for the user and also for the society as a whole. As such, sharing and collaborative services are forms of social innovation. Additionally, they went in depth with concept of ‘platform’, the organizing principle that, by making possible new purposeful connections, enables forms of collaboration and exchange between the parties. Moreover, they investigated co-creation and co-production as means to set the conditions for new places, circumstances and policies where and through which service design is practiced.
The course explored the concept of the sharing and collaborative services through the lenses of social innovation and considering the emerging landscape of platform economy. It reflected on the concepts and cases that populate the galaxy of these innovative services, and focused on the distinctive features and mechanisms.