Throughout the month of September we shall carry out 2-hour chat sessions under each of our topics of investigations:<\/p>\n
How does city administration embrace social innovation?<\/strong><\/address>\nWe shall be investigating the way cities play a new broker role, engage with residents, organisations and other stakeholders, develop networks, in order to co-create and co-produce.We will also investigate the involvement of civil servants and of the <\/span>administration in general, the role played by leaders and training schemes.<\/span><\/address>\n\u00a0<\/address>\nWhat are the usual obstacles and difficulties when applying social innovation?<\/strong><\/address>\nSocial innovation cannot be applied easily and faces many cultural and political hurdles, as well as structural ones. The investment in terms of financial and human resources can appear to be too large to be overcome and legal structures preventing to undertake innovative approaches. This question will look at the main issues face for the application of social innovation, as well as the approaches undertaken by authorities to overcome them.<\/address>\n\u00a0<\/address>\nWhat city platforms best support social innovation?<\/strong><\/address>\nExperimentation for social innovation is crucial. These experiments can take place in virtual as well as physical (real) environments. As such, we will investigate the advantages of the different forms: physical spaces (laboratories, existing or new places for meetings, co-working<\/span>..); online spaces(interactive webpages, social media, ..); and, physical contacts without space limits (temporary outdoor activities, etc). We will make a distinction between between fragmented areas as opposed to compact ones.<\/address>\n\u00a0<\/address>\nHow can cities support the diffusion and scaling of social innovation?<\/strong><\/address>\nThe last research question will seek to provide a balance in between the examined examples in order to adjust the extent to which they can be transferred within cities in light of differentiation between policy fields as well as equity. It will also investigate the main principles which can be applied notwithstanding the variety of cultures, practices and economical structures within European cities.<\/address>\n