Minutes of the workshop"New technologies and digitalization: opportunities and

challenges for social economy & social enterprises"

Held at the European Economic and Social Committee on 12 May 2017Rue Van Maerlant 2, 1000 Bruxelles - Room VM3

Disclaimer: This document summarizes the content of the workshop jointly held on May 12th 2017 by the European Commission and the European Economic and Social Committee. Registration was free and open to the public. The participants who chose to introduce themselves during their intervention are named in this document; those who did not are labelled “Participant”. The views expressed in this document should not be taken to reflect the views of either the European Commission or the European Economic and Social Committee.

Welcome Speeches:

Michael Smyth – Vice President in charge of Budget – European Economic and Social Committee

I firstly want to underline the good cooperation between the European Commission and the European Economic and Social Committee in organising this event.

I feel directly concerned by the subject matter, as I chair a large social housing association 1 in Belfast that has been grappling with new technologies – indeed, 10% tenants are physically or mentally disabled, and carers increasingly use digital technologies to assist them.

The social economy has been part of the European agenda since the European Parliament voted the Toia Report in 20092, triggering a momentum that was exploited by the European Commission in 2011 through its Social Business Initiative3. The EESC has been working consistently on the matter in parallel for over a decade4.

The issue of digitalisation is crucial for social economy enterprises, because the changes it implies offer both challenges and opportunities. Indeed, new digital technologies enable quicker exchanges of best practices and offer tools to support the values of the social

1 Habinteg Housing Association2 Motion for a European Parliament resolution on social economy, A6-0015/2009 3 Communication COM(2011) 682 – Social Business Initiative: Creating a favourable climate for social enterprises, key stakeholders in the social economy and innovation4 European Economic and Social Committee, Social Economy Category

economy through new collaborative, short-circuit and circular economic models, on which social economy actors could have a defining influence if they rise up to the task. However, it should be noted that the budgetary constraints faced by most social economy enterprises is a clear barrier as they tend to struggle more than other enterprises in their uptake of new technologies.

Slawomir Tokarski – Director Innovation & Advanced Manufacturing – DG GROW (European Commission)

Social innovators and social entrepreneurs must be at the heart of digitalisation and pioneer new usages of technologies. Disruptive technologies can inspire the social economy and vice versa – for instance, the blockchain carries an intrinsic decentralisation approach that could have many implications for services and generate a high social added value.

It is the role of public authorities to make sure that the environment in which social economy enterprises operate is fit for them. This year's ongoing European Social Innovation Competition5 (whose winners are to be announced in October) is focused on the potentialities of digitalisation for equity, and gave way to over 800 entries from 40 countries, providing good examples of the relevance and implications of digital practices and solutions for social innovators. The EU is at the forefront of this wave: indeed, we have just inaugurated our Social Challenges Innovation Platform6, which will be live this summer and will serve as a matchmaker between providers and recipients of social challenges and distribute grants amounting to 30.000 euros to selected projects.

Introduction: What can be expected from the event?

Peter Baeck – Head of Collaborative Economy Research – Nesta7

Technologies are undeniably transforming everything about our habits. This workshop provides a unique opportunity to discuss the implications for the social economy with all the components of the ecosystem: traditional social economy enterprises, up-and-coming social start-ups, public administration…

Through its Collaborative Economy Research Unit, Nesta conducts research but also operates a grant system geared towards social economy actors who have a digital platform, and assists them in their search for funding opportunities - whether private or public. We also run the Digital Social Innovation (DSI4EU) initiative8, financed by the European Commission under the Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation (CAPS) programme, in the framework of Horizon 2020.

Our vast research and experience in the field show that there is in Europe a huge amount of small and scattered, but very innovative activities going on mainly in cities (as their occurrence matches with the presence of intense mainstream digital activity), concentrated

5 European Social Innovation Competition 2017, Equality Rebooted6 Social CHAlleNGes Innovation Platform7 Nesta – the innovation foundation8 Digital Social Innovation – DSI4EU

in South-West Europe, and mainly run by newer organisations, whereas established social economy actors struggle with digitalisation. We are witnessing the emergence of fascinating new phenomena, such as the potential offered by open data for a more transparent world (the obvious example being OpenCorporates9, which thrived after Lehman Brothers collapsed); the power of citizen science and crowdsourcing for harnessing the power of crowds to conduct scientific analyses; the rise of open hardware; the boom of digital democracy; the new linkages being established between migration and tech (with opportunities in terms of training and education and training, donating, and volunteering); and game-changing innovations that are turning the sectors of health, care, waste management or education on their heads. However, we are yet to scale up these advances and turn them into large-scale opportunities.

Four main challenges lie ahead of us:

o Bridging the large gap in terms of the current digital skills and capacity of social economy enterprises (many of whom do not even have any digital strategy) and what would actually be needed;

o The lack of efficient and systematic knowledge-sharing between social innovators and between public authorities;

o The lack of data and research about the specific impact of digitalisation on the governance, models and strategies of social enterprises;

o The lack of appropriate funding streams to answer these challenges.

Panel 1: State of play

Gaia Marcus – Project Manager - Centrepoint Youth Homelessness Databank10

Centrepoint is a charity that provided housing to 18,000 young homeless people and supported 9,000 others in another way than housing in 2016. Our model is data-driven, digitally-enabled and user-centric; our team comprises frontline workers, data specialists and service designers.

We have three main activities: a dashboard that compares the numbers of homeless young people in an area according to data provided by the government, local government and charities – showing that open data is not the be-end be-all, and that public data also needs to be challenged; an online community of former Centrepoint users; an online/phone helpline for homeless young people.

Our experience shows that digitalisation is not about technology but rather about people: indeed, it can change the entire operational model of a charity/firm and an in-depth strategy taking account of that is essential. Culture eats strategy for breakfast: you cannot digitise a habit that doesn't exist. For instance, the online forum that we launched failed because it was

9 OpenCorporates 10 Centrepoint

not backed by habits grounded in charities' work, they do not follow their ex-beneficiaries. Digitalisation can have incredibly positive impacts, but they have to answer real needs: for instance, our online helpline did wonders in terms of accessibility for the people who refuse to face-to-face or phone contacts for various reasons.

François Durollet - CEO – Simplon.co11

Simplon.co is a 4-year old initiative seeking to solve a paradox: youth unemployment rates have skyrocketed over the past years, but at the same time job offers related to data and app development go unanswered. Simplon attempts to bridge this gap by offering free 6-month coding trainings to NEETs. There are now 40 Simplon "fabrics" which have trained over 1000 "digital blue collars". Simplon is also one of the leaders of the movement in Europe: indeed, we provide tech support and methodology to other organisations through partnerships, which has led to the emergence of similar initiatives in Belgium, Italia, Romania and Spain. We have also created a web development agency with a specific focus on non-profit actors and on the social economy, offering services designed for their digital needs; several former trainees went on to join these structures as employees.

We seized the opportunities offered by digitalisation to react to concrete existing problems: solving the aforementioned job paradox, integrating refugees and vulnerable young people, and helping the non-profit sector and the social economy close the gap in terms of digitalisation regarding technology, skills and strategy.

Anna Sienicka – Vice-President - Tech Soup Europe12

TechSoup Europe was founded in 2008, has its headquarters in Warsaw and operates in 48 European countries. It provides technological software and hardware solutions to NGOs and serves as an intermediary with the rest of the ecosystem (government, hackers, corporate donors and activists) that is willing to offer support in terms of digital capacities, funding or time. We have a large impact in Europe, as we targeted 250+ NGOs and enabled them to save over 914 million euros in costs.

We also have a community programme which develops and scales solutions, such as Save The Night (not yet in Europe), an app that provides hotel rooms for domestic abuse victims through partnership with hotels; webinars for NGOs; or a Polish open-source platform helping citizens to hold local governments accountable and allowing them to submit their own ideas regarding the use of open data.

We believe digitalisation is essentially about empowering people.

Alain Coheur – Member of the European Economic and Social Committee and Director for European and International Affairs - Solidaris13

The EESC is currently working on the impact of digitalisation on health and social protection. Europe is lagging behind in terms of e-health and we need a European agenda to tackle

11 Simplon.co 12 TechSoup Europe13 Solidaris – Mutualité socialiste

digitalisation across the continent. There are also important variations in health systems and degree of digitalisation across Europe, with Estonia being the first example of a digital state with integrated e-healthcare services.

E-health apps are soaring: there were worth 2.4 billion euros in 2013; in 2018, they will be worth 21 billion. There over 40,000 existing apps – however, not all of them will succeed as they need to answer a real need and to provide practically applicable solutions.

The health ecosystem is complex and structured with many public and private actors. Health data is very sensitive, and does not only contain medical but also financial information about one's social protection situation or medical expenses. Yet, e-health apps are not regulated and the data generally ends up within the remit of the GAFAs.

The medical profession itself is also at risk seeing as algorithms are getter better at diagnosing – maybe even better than doctors themselves. Systems of direct reimbursement by the State (such as the "tiers-payant") will also be modernised and impact the ways in which healthcare services are provided.

Jean-Claude Mizzi – Co-Founder and Co-Manager - Association HopHopFood14

HopHopFood is an association creating zones of food solidarity while reducing food waste via a digital platform. It operates at the crossroads between the social and solidarity economy, the circular economy and the collaborative/platform/sharing economy.

Food vulnerability caused by food prices touches 24% of citizens in Europe, and 90 million tons of food are wasted every year, 53% of which by private individuals and 60% that are still edible/drinkable. HopHopFood strives to solve this paradox by fostering solidarity through an app (at the end of 2014 over 40% of the French public have said they would use this app if it existed). The beneficiaries would be students, migrants and refugees, lonely women and vulnerable people in need in general, who are in structural food insecurity. The aim of the association is to go beyond the platform itself and to create effective solidarity – digitalisation is a means and not an end!

Benchmarking French actors in the food waste management sector we found that most of them are B2B or B2C, and that there is not yet anything available in C2C or CtoA. We have calculated that if 1% of the French use the app for 10% of their waste, more food will be saved than is currently being managed by French food banks. The potential of digitalisation here is scale.

Digitalisation also has implications for funding: we plan on using crowdfunding to raise money to develop the association (beyond the 30 000 euros the co-founders invested in the platform to develop the iOS, Android and PC versions).

Finally, digitalisation is also extremely valuable for the social economy as it helps enterprises to measure their impact precisely and reliably, thus solving a recurrent crucial problem for social economy enterprises. This could also help strengthen social finance markets, which suffer from lack of information.

14 HopHopFood

Questions and remarks

- Harry Robbins - Founder - Outlandish / Co-operative Technologists: Digitalisation only works if the people using it are ready for it – so how can we get organisations that work for positive social change culturally ready for digitalisation?

Gaia Marcus – Project Manager - Centrepoint Youth Homelessness Databank: We notice that digitally upskilling senior management is a big trend, but that frontline workers tend to be forgotten – but they are often the main implementers of any digital strategy! The products need to work for them and be designed with their experience specifically in mind for any kind of culture change to happen. There also needs to be more ties with the middle management level and horizontal ties between workers for digital tools to succeed.

Anna Sienicka – Vice-President - Tech Soup Europe: On digital-readiness, there is not really a choice: communication is key and if social economy enterprises fail to realise the power of social media, they are likely to fail. The concentration of exchanges within a few networks (such as Facebook or Twitter) needs to be accounted with and these networks need to be brought on board, as their support is invaluable in terms of impact.

- Angelos Charlaftis – Consultant - e-Paphos Advisors Teamwork: What makes young people more prone to homelessness than others? Why do food waste solutions not target the homeless enough?

Gaia Marcus – Project Manager - Centrepoint Youth Homelessness Databank: First, homelessness is not just about street homelessness, but there is also a big problem around "sex for rent", which tends to concern young people more than others. Young people are often vulnerable and lack a stable financial situation, which makes them more prone to homelessness, and the danger is that it can have serious repercussions on the rest of their lives. But homelessness is just a symptom of other roots – poverty, or a housing crisis. Centrepoint provides counselling, training, housing and encourages people to get the support they are entitled to. But we realise that many apps are more about benefitting the user/donator (and making them feel good about themselves) rather than the beneficiary because they do not address root causes - there is no point in only solving the surface.

Jean-Claude Mizzi – Co-Founder and Co-Manager - Association HopHopFood: Entourage is an association and an app that allows Parisians to geolocate homeless people in their area so as to know where to go to help, and association Le Carillon is a network of shops that have explicitly accepted to support the homeless through free food or other supplies.

Anna Sienicka – Vice-President - Tech Soup Europe: Let us not forget that there are many layers to innovation and technology – 1/3rd of children in the Silicon Valley are homeless!

- Salvatore Vetro – Treasurer- ENSIE asbl: Many work integration social enterprises (WISEs) perform recycling and upcycling activities, and they feel threatened by the recent trendiness of the circular economy, as it looks like an occasion for capitalist multinationals to capture the market that was previously only occupied by social enterprises.

Jean-Claude Mizzi: There is indeed a real resistance from some established social enterprises, but not only towards capitalistic enterprises. We are discussing with big charities and some

are very reluctant to approach digital solutions such as the ones we offer, some having refused to cooperate with HopHopFood as they view it as a "market stealer".

François Durollet - CEO – Simplon.co: Traditional social economy actors are going to have to modernise their strategy and include digitalisation because services tend to become disintermediated (meaning that they provide direct contact between users and producers) and because they offer many possibilities for cross-domain actions, whereas many social economy enterprises are very specialised and act as intermediaries/middlemen.

- Mounia El Kotni, Fabrique des Territoires Innovants: Do social enterprises who collect sensitive data through apps do what is needed secure them (notably in fields like health or support to victims of violence)?

Anna Sienicka – Vice-President - Tech Soup Europe: The app for victims of domestic abuse that I told you about does not collect any personal information and deletes everything it has afterwards. Indeed, this is not just about data privacy but also about safety.

- Peter Baeck – Head of Collaborative Economy Research – Nesta: Food for thought for the rest of the day: how do we integrate all these initiatives together so as to capitalise on one another's network and communication? How does the non-profit and less-for-profit sector deal with disruption differently than the for-profit sector?

Panel 2 – Platforms for Change

Elena Como – Research and Evaluation Manager – LAMA Development and Cooperation Agency15

LAMA is an Italian cooperative agency that does research and strategic consultancy both in Italy and at the international level. Platform cooperatives in the collaborative economy are important for us firstly because LAMA is itself a cooperative, because some of our clients are cooperatives, and because it is relevant to our research on new economic models.

We conducted the first European qualitative study on platform cooperativism16. Platform cooperatives are a form of social enterprise operating in the collaborative economy; they are cooperatives that take the form of a digital platform. Many digital platforms that are shaping today's economy at incredible speed are criticized for their extractive model and opaque governance. The term "platform cooperative" was coined by American scholar Trevor Schulz17 as a possible answer to these issues. But platform cooperatives can also emerge as existing cooperatives who switch to a platform-based model because of a need to adapt to digitalisation and to rethink their mutualistic business model and means to engage with their members.

Today, platform cooperatives are however a niche: indeed, platform cooperative start-ups are very rare because there are barriers to choosing the cooperative form and also because

15 LAMA Development and Cooperation Agency16 LAMA Development and Cooperation Agency and Cooperatives Europe: Cooperative Platforms in a European Landscape: An Exploratory Study17 Platform.coop

cooperativism suffers from an old-fashioned image (when it is even known about); and existing cooperatives suffer from huge technological and skills gaps, as well as from financial problems, that prevent them from taking the platform leap. There are important steps to take to overcome these obstacles: we need more awareness, proper funding schemes, and the emergence of networks of cooperatives to act as a counterpart to multinationals.

Felix Weth – CEO – Fairmondo18

Fairmondo is an online marketplace that is conceived as an alternative e-Bay for both individuals and small enterprises, promoting corruption-resilient, circular and responsible consumption. It can be viewed as a platform cooperative as it is owned and structured in a cooperative way, as it fits with the values of the project.

Fairmondo has 1800 sellers and 15000 dedicated users in Germany, and is currently in the process of becoming a global cooperative with an integrated global marketplace, but it is owned by local users and employees wherever it operates – for instance, the model has been picked up in the UK and entrepreneurs in other countries are also interested.

I believe the cooperative model has undeniable qualities and the potential to appeal to many, but it needs a bit of a push before it can thrive. Besides empowering social enterprises through digitalisation, we should also be thinking about disempowering their mainstream counterparts. This is not a technological issue but rather an entrepreneurial one: the real challenge is how to reorganise the general model and for social enterprises not be seen as a marginal alternative.

Harry Robbins - Founder - Outlandish / Co-operative Technologists19

Outlandish is a digital technology agency building market-leading tech solutions for private actors. It addresses the market failure that we have been observing in the last decade, whereby money and scarce resources are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, a phenomenon particularly acute in the tech sector where large companies are able to buy up emerging capacities and using them for entertainment rather than social goods. Outlandish sells products and skills to the highest-bidding companies provided that they ensure they will use them responsibly, and used the surplus to invest in technologies that would otherwise go unfunded. It has a 1.5 million euros turnover and employs over 20 people.

In order for our business model to have a larger impact, we funded a network20 of tech digital cooperatives that follow similar aims, and realised there is a used untapped potential because these actors are scattered and do not act jointly. The network now pools resources (including surpluses) and training, and advocates for this model to spread wider and to other sectors. As organisations get very large, they can become difficult to manage. Size is necessary in the perspective of an extractive capitalistic model, but in the cooperative sense it makes more sense to have numerous smaller businesses integrated within a larger network.

18 Fairmondo19 Outlandish20 Cooperative Technologists

Yet there are significant challenges, most prominently undercapitalisation – half the tech cooperatives in the UK could not find the time or resources to even join the network. In order to unlock this potential, cooperatives need to communicate and pool resources.

Ibon Zugasti – Industry & Territorial Development Manager – LKS Mondragon21

Mondragon22 is a larger-scale cooperative example which started out in the late fifties in the Basque region as an answer to under-provision of public services, and has grown into a very diversified cooperative group present worldwide (through a multi-localisation strategy) and with a turnover of over 11 billion euros.

Technological integration and innovation are the heart of the working cooperative model of Mondragon, as competitiveness and profit are seen as the means to social ends: creating decent, quality jobs for workers and allowing them to be protagonists of their professional life – thus fostering a social innovation ecosystem.

Mondragon is a platform that drives innovation, based on the strategy "M4Future"23 whereby training, research, technological and industrial innovations are linked with one another within an open innovation ecosystem, thus promoting inter-cooperation.

Sandrino Graceffa – Director General - SMart24

SMart is a two-decades-old cooperative that was initially intended for artists and has widened to all types of independent workers and freelancers. It defines itself as the "anti-Uber": indeed Uber treats dependent workers (who do not choose their clients, prices or even routes) like independent workers (without participating in their work-based social protection), whereas SMart offers the benefits and security of salaried employment to autonomous freelancers. On the coopérative d'activité et d'emploi model, the independent workers pay the income they make into the cooperative and receive it back, minus a membership fee and their social contributions, in the form of a salary.

Throughout the year 2016, SMart helped 100 000 people in 34 cities in Europe and had a 180-million-euro turnover. It adopted the cooperative model progressively in all of its branches, and relies exclusively on its own profits and on the fees of members. SMart is based on an online platform which serves to structure the functional employer-employee relationship between workers and the cooperatives. It also provides many online and face-to-face services, such as training, counselling and events.

We believe that many problems can be solved at the European level and we are extremely pleased that through the European Pillar of Social Rights and through the work of European workers' unions, the protection of independent workers and the need to protect workers at the EU level are increasingly being recognised.

21 LKS22 Mondragon23 M4Future24 SMart

I think that digital platforms can produce the best or the worst solutions, from ours to extractive models based on a bubble exaggerating the value of data. We believe that workers and social enterprises should join forces, and that public powers should fund massively social enterprises as a solution to unemployment; that an enabling framework for social innovation should be created; and finally that traditional social economy enterprises should unite with public authorities to inject venture capital into these new initiatives.

Antonio Longo – Member of the European Economic and Social Committee

I am an economic journalist and I represent Italian consumers in the EESC, in addition to chairing the work of the EESC on the digital agenda. The EESC is currently looking into the impact of digitalisation and of the collaborative economy on the general society and economy.

We should view cooperatives as a key component of the social market economy: indeed, they are an enterprise form that offers a new perspective on social innovation and an equitable distribution of profits and resources while competing in the market economy. The productivity gains made possible by digitalisation are having and will have important consequences on the labour market, such as concentration of gains or inequalities in access to social protection.

Agricultural cooperatives are a good example of this: they are collecting and analysing big data and using it to anticipate production, and support their members in their uptake of precision technologies (drones, sensors). They are also using platforms to get closer to their members but also to their consumers, allowing for a better traceability of products.

Questions and remarks:

- Peter Baeck – Head of Collaborative Economy Research – Nesta: Young people tend to engage more in digital social innovation, and cooperatives are viewed as more old-fashioned. Are platform cooperatives delusional or a solution to this paradox?

Felix Weth – CEO – Fairmondo: We have realised that established cooperatives are not always willing to engage in digitalisation through partnerships (they seem very self-focused), and did not always have the technical means to do so – some of them do not even have the email addresses of their members!

Ibon Zugasti – Industry & Territorial Development Manager – LKS Mondragon: Our University launched a new degree on entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership based on the Finnish model of learning-by-doing - the degree consists in creating a cooperative company. This could also be an answer to the negative or inexistent image of cooperatives among the younger.

Harry Robbins - Founder - Outlandish / Co-operative Technologists: We are looking at rebranding entrepreneurship itself, and making the people who both want to launch a business and to make the world a better place realise that the cooperative form is the way to do it.

Elena Como – Research and Evaluation Area Manager – LAMA Development and Cooperation Agency: Most cooperatives we work with feel indeed neglected by the youth, there are more and more start-up cooperative programmes targeting specifically the young, they could help change the situation. Moreover, cooperatives tend to communicate on their values rather than on their practices, which does not speak to the practically-minded younger generations.

- Peter Baeck – Head of Collaborative Economy Research – Nesta: The message here is that cooperatives have an old-fashioned reputation, but that their model is actually very modern. For instance, community shares are an investment product traditionally used by cooperatives, which took on a new appeal when the crowdfunding world took it up. Cooperatives have to succeed in adapting to a digital world or it will happen without them.

- Alain Coheur – Member of the European Economic and Social Committee and Director for European and International Affairs - Solidaris: Is digitalisation (still) a vector for social progress?

Antonio Longo – Member of the European Economic and Social Committee: If we only focus on growth, then the mainstream businesses thriving on digitalisation are the clear winners of digitalisation. But this is about creating a narrative in which young people feel represented, embodying values of innovation, self-fulfilment, solidarity. There, the social economy has a card to play and might come out on top.

Sandrino Graceffa – Director General - SMART: The situation in which Uber finds itself is actually completely irrational: it raises money massively on markets whereas it keeps losing money every year; it is typical bubble behaviour. It also has a bigger impact on the reality of work and I believe it has a political aim, which we generally call 'uberisation'. We at SMart also have a political aim, but it is the opposite one. We have to change scales and stop thinking that 'small is beautiful', and realise that the cooperative model is actually very modern. It is a political, societal choice, and we cannot present Europeans with this choice if we don't scale up.

Harry Robbins - Founder - Outlandish / Co-operative Technologists: Digitalisation is again a means, not an end, and it has simply been mostly used wrongly so far. Digitalisation is intrinsically a tool of democratisation and offers power to everyone. The problem is that it is not seen as a public good, and that the State cannot take over Facebook or Uber. The cooperative model solves the paradox and offers the best of both worlds.

Felix Weth – CEO – Fairmondo: The thing is that Uber does not care about the drivers, they are only a stock in their business model and they will be replaced by self-driving cars as soon as it becomes possible. The cooperative model is about the workers.

Ibon Zugasti – Industry & Territorial Development Manager – LKS Mondragon: The study carried out by the Young Foundation of the social innovation ecosystem of Mondragon shows the cooperative group has huge direct and indirect social impacts on their workers, their families, their regions… Mondragon is one of the pillars of the Basque social cohesion model, and the region now has a Gini index close to that of Sweden, and the social economy model has played a huge role in this. It is about creating shared value instead of individual value.

Inter-cooperation is at the heart of the Mondragon model, we are also active in the International Cooperative Alliance, and with other social economy organisations in Spain and in Europe. But the social economy cannot go against technology; it must find a way to thrive thanks to the 4th industrial revolution, not in spite of it.

Patrick Klein – Policy Officer - European Commission: I agree that awareness is indeed key. The Commission just launched a project25 promoting the cooperative model to young people through trainings and the like.

Denis Stokkink – Founder & President - Pour la Solidarité Think & Do Tank: We are leading one of the consortia26 implementing the aforementioned young cooperative project and we are planning on looking into online courses. Regarding the power of the social economy – we should remember that "cooperative" means "working together". The social economy keeps offering small building blocks as answers to these questions. We have to assemble these blocks to reach a critical mass point and have a leverage effect to have an impact.

Victor Meseguer – Director - Social Economy Europe: Inter-cooperation is indeed key, as it is the only way to make our worldview and our business model heard.

Angelos Charlaftis – Consultant - e-Paphos Advisors Teamwork: The tide may be turning for Uber, if we look at the recent ECJ Advocate-General's position categorising them as a transport company.

Participant: The disruptive power of cooperatives is undeniable, but this is a mostly male panel – what is the cooperative movement doing about diversity?

Sandrino Graceffa – Director General - SMART: The cooperative sector is indeed ageing and not diverse enough. The key there is affirmative action and regulation, and our we have enshrined diversity requirements in our statuses.

Felix Weth – CEO – Fairmondo: There needs to be a reliable backbone to support the rest of the group. Inter-cooperation is indeed key and it is not happening yet, or not enough. Many people are members of a cooperative without even knowing it! The untapped potential is enormous. Cooperatives should also indeed embrace the empowerment of minorities within their business strategies.

Diana Dovgan – Policy Officer - CECOP-CICOPA: We should avoid confusion – technology is not the only channel to tackle social issues!

Salvatore Vetro – Treasurer- ENSIE asbl: The social economy, thanks to its participative model, leads people to work and decide together. New technologies can help, but they are not the only way, and they should not replace human contact. We should even use human contact as a comparative advantage to differentiate ourselves from dematerialised experiences.

Harry Robbins - Founder - Outlandish / Co-operative Technologists: The skills shortage is one of the key challenges and poses huge problems in terms of diversity. But the strength of cooperatives resides in harnessing the power of people, not of capital. Regarding technology

25 Call for proposals: Reduction of youth unemployment and the setup of co-operatives26 COOPilot

replacing human interactions, my experience is that as human beings, even geeks like to meet up in pubs and talk face-to-face, and technology will not change that.

Ibon Zugasti – Industry & Territorial Development Manager – LKS Mondragon: Our vision is cannot be short-term. Taxis will become driverless; we need to understand how we can participate in building these cars. There is no escaping technology; the social economy must be a protagonist if it wants to succeed.

Elena Como – Research and Evaluation Area Manager – LAMA Development and Cooperation Agency: The problem is not using technology but also how and when you use it and to what end. We also need to develop a distinctive cooperative model (not just to transpose mainstream practices), and create quality jobs (not just cooperatively owned businesses).

Panel 3: Digital commons

Marleen Stikker – Founder & Director - Waag Society27

The Waag Society is best-known through its spin-off Fairphone28. We started out as the first cooperative working on DNA issues. We also conduct research on the central topic of the commons.

The key issue at stake here is distribution: the Internet allows for a distributed, circular, horizontal, trans-local, decentralised, city-based, non-competitive cooperative system to emerge. The commons are the goods available to all members of a society – they are either inherited or produced (tools, technology, culture, protocols, and infrastructure). The problem is that these values underpinning the Internet system have been used for extreme centralisation and extraction through large Internet companies, which fits with the 20 th

economic paradigm (labour to money to consumption).

The 21st new economic paradigm needs to be adjusted: a new model is proposed by Kate Raworth, doughnut economics29, whereby the outer circle represents ecological justice and the inner circle social justice. The economy needs to stay within the doughnut if it wants to be sustainable. It is interesting to note that the commons are part of the economy, not outside of it.

Mayo Fuster Morell – Director of Dimmons IN3 UOC30 and Promotor of the Procomuns.net Forum31

Dimmons IN3 UOC is a centre researching on the commons and the collaborative economy. We have mapped the commons collaborative economy in Barcelona – Peer2Peer Value

27 Waag Society28 Fairphone29 Kate Raworth – Doughnut Economics30 Dimmons IN3 UOC31 Procomuns.net

European project. As Nobel Prize Elinor Ostrom32 showed, the commons are a much more efficient and fairer way to organise production that capitalism.

We often witness a new phenomenon called "wikiwashing", that is to say, the use of the values of the commons by multinationals who seek to enclose the commons and extract value from them. In order to pinpoint uses of such strategies, we classify initiatives depending on the modalities of collaborative economy initiatives, in terms of business model, governance, environmental impact, inclusion and openness.

Based on these criteria, we mapped all commons-related initiatives in Barcelona. Indeed, the City of Barcelona (and other public authorities) has problems differentiating the initiatives that deserve funding from those that do not – as a matter of fact, the economic variable is not the only relevant one.

We also help design policies adapted to the commons collaborative economy – co-construction is crucial, processes have to reflect substance. The European Commission should learn from that – for instance, its recent collaborative economy agenda did not include any reference to the commons. On that topic, the European Commons Assembly hosted a Policy Co-Creation Forum33, which generated 100+ policy recommendations that have been submitted to the European Parliament.

Massimo Menichinelli – Project Manager - IAAC | Fab City Research Lab34

As FabLab BCN35 recently celebrated 10 years, we decided to open a new research centre on the impact of Fablabs and to adapt it to the bigger-scale emerging concept of Fab City.

Theoretically, this model is about transforming a system based on global value chains to more localised production (in reality no city will be entirely self-sustainable before long, but we are working towards that), but in which cities are still integrated in knowledge networks and value chains. However, no physical products will travel between them as they do now: we are moving from an PITO (Production In Trash Out) approach to a DIDO (Data In Data Out) one.

We launched the FabAcademy36 in Barcelona, we have an official platform for fablabs, an open-data and open-software platform for citizens.

Policies in this domain in Barcelona have resisted political change, which is good, and there is now a prototype for a maker district.

Meelis Joost – Member of the European Economic and Social Committee

I am working with two organisations in Estonia: the first association doing advocacy for people with disabilities and chronic diseases; the second is a Swedish-Estonian foundation offering services to families with a disabled child.

32 OSTROM Elinor (1990), Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press33 European Commons Assembly 201634 IAAC | Fab City Research Lab35 FabLab BCN36 FabLab BCN - FabAcademy

As we have stressed throughout the day, social economy actors who are offering care services to targeted groups lag behind in terms of digitalisation. However, digitalisation offers unprecedented potential – for instance, through online platforms that match needs and help.

Accessibility is a key feature of digitalisation, for better or for worse.

Data mining can be used to analyse behaviours, which could have a huge impact on care and services.

Questions and remarks

Harry Robbins - Founder - Outlandish / Co-operative Technologists: This question of "are we inside or outside the box" has been repeatedly heard today. How can we change economic paradigms?

Marleen Stikker – Founder & Director - Waag Society: Many people say that Kate Raworth is the 21st century Keybes - soon we are going to say that the social economy is a normal part of economics. By the way, Waag Society offers services to help political parties rethink their programmes.

Mayo Fuster Morell – Director of Dimmons IN3 UOC and Promotor of the Procomuns.net Forum: We need to occupy the economy – we should call what we do "the economy", no "digital social innovation". We are not at the margins - this is why we at Procomuns say "commons collaborative economy" and not just "commons". After the 2008 crisis, it is obvious that the current economic system is unsustainable – we had the housing bubble, we now have the digital bubble... What did the European Commission do to reform the financial system and to finance an alternative way of doing things? The emergence of populism and fascism should ring a bell and show the Commission that people want control over their own life. The commons movement can answer that.

Peter Baeck – Head of Collaborative Economy Research – Nesta: The Tech4Good movement spends too much time reflecting about tech and not enough about good. Fairphone is a good example of a product responding to a need and creating a market. But how do you reach out to people, initiatives and public authorities?

Massimo Menichinelli – Project Manager - IAAC | Fab City Research Lab: Understanding the context is key, there should be a mix of imitation of best practices and context-specificity.

Marleen Stikker – Founder & Director - Waag Society: We prototype new ideas and concepts and we look for partners to scale them up. A lot of commercial parties come to us to learn about our concepts, which is only interesting if the learning goes both ways, but the problem is that they do not modify their core strategy in return – it is generally about creating a trendy Corporate Social Responsibility strategy...

Angelos Charlaftis – Consultant - e-Paphos Advisors Teamwork: The blockchain is an incredibly disruptive technology, especially for the commons. Artificial intelligence could also change the future of banking.

Felix Weth – CEO – Fairmondo: Blockchain has a lot of potential, both positive and negative, and currently only banks and commercial investors are investing in it. Can it be used for social good?

Marleen Stikker – Founder & Director - Waag Society: Technology is not neutral, it brings specific values - and ownership matters. Blockchain needs to be open and accountable. There are lot of positive initiatives as well but not much money is going into funding them.

Massimo Menichinelli – Project Manager - IAAC | Fab City Research Lab: We are working on the blockchain for many positive initiatives. A lot of interest in the blockchain is based on the bitcoin and is irremediably attached to this money, although some good can still be done with it.

Mayo Fuster Morell – Director of Dimmons IN3 UOC and Promotor of the Procomuns.net Forum: Some of the core principles of the Internet are currently at risk - net neutrality, respect of democracy – as we are replicating the same principles and procedures of old technologies. It's not about the technology itself, but about the use and agenda you make of it. These technologies are also designed mainly by men, without thinking about intersectionality and feminism. We should also talk more about the care economy, which is soaring, and not just from a digital point of vue.

Meelis Joost – Member of the European Economic and Social Committee: The issue here is that fixing a problem is generally viewed more as a cost and not as an opportunity. Investing in people means saving later, but this is not recognised enough in policy-making.

Peter Baeck – Head of Collaborative Economy Research – Nesta: We are talking about very complex technologies – we should not get ahead of ourselves, only the elite understand the blockchain. The biggest challenge for many social economy organisations is learning to set up a crowdfunding page! The debate about the blockchain is also ignoring the impact on the environment, as it massively consumes energy.

Céline Urbain – Economic Advisor - UNISOC: The care economy is indeed confronted to a challenge to be integrated within the economy. We tend to view digitalisation as a solution to reduce costs, but a challenge for us is quality human contact, which cannot be produced digitally.

Peter Baeck – Head of Collaborative Economy Research – Nesta: What interesting is that some social enterprises (an example would be GoodGym) use digitalisation for care purposes.

Mayo Fuster Morell – Director of Dimmons IN3 UOC and Promotor of the Procomuns.net Forum: When we mapped the commons collaborative economy, we realised that 50% of the cases revolve around care for kids (clothes, toys, nursery). But it is also the area where most initiatives fail, because maybe of lack of institutional support.

Marleen Stikker – Founder & Director - Waag Society: The problem is that the capitalist model supports social enterprises only because they provide public services with mixed income sources, so with less financial public involvement. Not everything is a market, there are spaces with lots of activities but not all of them respond to market behaviour. Social impact bonds are also financially defined. We need to bridge these two worlds and change paradigms.

Peter Baeck – Head of Collaborative Economy Research – Nesta: The maker movement is also running against this paradigm – we are taught to buy things, we do not buy things for people to create for themselves.

Mayo Fuster Morell – Director of Dimmons IN3 UOC and Promotor of the Procomuns.net Forum: Public procurement is crucial for the technological industry, but the rules in many areas penalise commons solutions. This is a key challenge because the public sector is responsible for the strand of the private sector that it supports through public procurement.

Marleen Stikker – Founder & Director - Waag Society: The political dimension is indeed important, we are all afraid of populists and this is not over. What people are looking for is agency, they are against a lot of the corporate world but they are not framing it in the same terms. The commons movement is about sovereignty. Europe is a political entity, and it has to choose between a social economy and a social market economy.

Panel 4 (1h13)Peter Baeck – Head of Collaborative Economy Research – Nesta: A good example to introduce this panel is the GoodSam app in the UK, which lists users who know how to do CPR and enables geo-tracking to match them in real time with cardiac arrest victims. This app is now integrated within public service delivery – as the 911 service automatically notifies GoodSam whenever it is alerted of a heart attack occurrence. This shows that social innovation can be supported but also scaled up by the public sector and even integrated in its own services.

Fabrizio Sestini – Senior Expert – Next-Generation Internet - DG CNECT

To showcase the importance of digital social innovation, I will turn to a 2012 study37 by the Oxford Internet Institute on the future of the Internet. It outlined different scenarios based on the underlying tensions existing at the time between commercial and social values, and distributiveness and concentration of the system. In 2012 the Internet could be divided into two poles: on one side the Big Brother companies (the GAFA), and on the other the "power to the people" side (with peer-to-peer, commons and e-democracy). But today many new distributed actors which are not as "social" as the "Power to the people" movement have emerged: web entrepreneurs (which are both distributed in governance and commercial in their approach), alongside social entrepreneurs (with a less-for-profit approach), and the genuinely collaborative economy (neither really commercial nor social). Despite this broader variety of actors and the emergence of new economic models, the web is now no less polarised, as the Big Brother companies are more powerful than ever, and new "big brothers" are emerging, exploiting the so-called "sharing economy".

The new extractive and centralised platforms that have emerged provide new services and social interactions, but the price to pay is more concentration of revenues, important barriers for new entrants, a stifling of innovation and privacy issues. Decentralisation is important because it implies democratic values, multiple choices, open standards, community networks (and not clouds, which are particularly centralised), more privacy, collective intelligence (as

37 Oxford Internet Institute (2012), Towards a Future Internet: Interrelation between Technological, Social and Economic Trends

opposed to artificial intelligence), symmetric data flows and a decentralised data governance. Decentralisation is important for democracy, society, the environment, the economy and for the Internet itself because it allows it to pursue different technological priorities.

The solutions for allowing decentralisation to prevail are regulation and public support of personal data spaces (possibly enabled by blockchain technology and/or peer-to-peer networks). The innovation ecosystem would be decentralised and open, and rely on the genuinely collaborative economy and consumption, the maker movement and e-democracy. Public authorities should also explore market failures, support decentralised initiatives giving people more choice, protect digital sovereignty and promote the emergence of new models.

The Commission supports the initiative "Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social innovation"38 (CAPS), which aims at harnessing the power of networks for solving social or environmental issues through open data/source/hardware and participatory decision-making. During the last 4 years, 36 projects were financed with over 65 million euros.

We are also working on a 5M-euro Blockchains for Social Good prize together with the European Innovation Council39.

Digital Social Innovation is open, participatory, bottom-up, decentralised and multidisciplinary. A manifesto for Digital Social Innovation40 is currently under construction – anyone can have their say and sign it after its finalisation!

Ulla Engelmann – Head of Unit – Clusters, Social Economy & Entrepreneurship - DG GROW

The aforementioned manifesto is an excellent example of policy co-creation, which is something that is particularly important for the European Commission. Digitalisation intrinsically enhances the possibility for citizens and stakeholders to have their say.

Today is the beginning of another co-creation process: indeed, the Commission Expert Group on Social Entrepreneurship (GECES) published a report41 in which the Commission extracted recommendations and translated them into a set of actions42 – one of them being the impact of digitalisation.

We need a comprehensive strategy for assisting social enterprises. Digitalisation presents huge potential but also risks (can end up concentrating power on an unprecedented level). The possibilities for scaling up reach and impact through technology are also a clear change brought about by digitalisation.

Co-operation is key at local (cities as enablers), regional, national and European levels. On public procurement, we are also working at various levels – we are monitoring

38 Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social innovation, https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/collective-awareness 39 European Innovation Council40 Digital Social Innovation Manifesto, https://www.dsimanifesto.eu/manifesto/ 41 Report by the Expert Group of the Commission on Social Entrepreneurship, Social enterprises and the social economy going forward (2016)42 Actions and strategy for the social economy and social enterprises – DG GROW

implementation of the 2014 revised public procurement rules43 and potentially looking into updating the 2011 'Buying Social' guide44.

Thomas Wobben – Director – Legislative Work - Committee of Regions

For the Committee of the Regions this debate is crucial. Social innovation does not work in an abstract environment - it has a territorial focus. Social innovation and digitalisation are interrelated challenges.

The rising populism parties actively build on the feeling that some cities and regions are plainly left behind, and it corresponds to a stark reality that we are currently experiencing in Europe.

We should realise that the debate at EU level is very remote from these realities: the Digital Single Market and e-democracy are about multi-level governance – the means should support the end, not the other way around. 1/3rd of the EU budget is spent on the European Social Fund (really?) without any of these new decentralisation techniques being discussed.

Austerity forces the public sector to change its ways. Local authorities have to deal with the changes occurring with digitalisation, while also tackling gaps across Europe in terms of digital readiness (both infrastructure and skills).

European actions must respect the realities of multi-level governance; the demand for ownership linked with the commons is intrinsically linked with it – it may prompt us to change the ways in which we cooperate. Yet today institutions mistrust one another, both horizontally and vertically. Bureaucratic complexity is also a consequence of this mistrust; we tend to overcomplicate in order to constrain others. Decentralisation can only work through cooperation.

Innovation is not just about money and private business success, nor about technology – the key issue is capacity-building, and we must be comprehensive (notably through public procurement). Investing in innovation means investing in people.

Denis Stokkink – Founder & President - Pour la Solidarité Think & Do Tank

As the rapporteur general for the GECES, I can vouch for the co-construction process that took place: around 70 experts from the public and private sector have met regularly to discuss initiatives and needs of social economy actors.

I see five possible ways in which public authorities could intervene:

1. Social enterprises need a legal framework, and the member states which do not have such a framework should be assisted. Legal initiatives have boomed in the last fifteen years and this trend should be fed into, yet many countries lack the support for it. This also means that digitalisation has to be controlled to make sure that it does not only benefits commercial purposes.

43 Directive 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on public procurement and repealing Directive 2004/18/EC44 Buying Social - A Guide to Taking Account of Social Considerations in Public Procurement (2011)

2. Public authorities should regulate the difference between training and social support. Many commercial enterprises provide digital training with no social inclusion purpose. Social enterprises are the only that can do both and there should be a clear premium on their ability to do so.

3. Public authorities can develop a strategic alliance framework between local, national and EU authorities and social economy enterprises to tackle the issues of digitalisation. The REVES network is a good start.

4. Appropriate funding tools are necessary. What is at stake is the emergence of an efficient mixed-income system corresponding to the social added value of social enterprises that provide public services, and to the private economic value that is being generated. The European Investment Fund guarantee scheme is interesting.

5. There should be a U-turn on public procurement: the new rules are very promising but they need to be applied at full scale. Public markets correspond to 19% of the GDP and social enterprises must be able to compete on a level playing field.

Questions and remarks:

Erdmuthe Klaer – Deputy Secretary General - REVES aisbl: The Committee of the Regions will host on June 8th a conference on co-creation and good practices. There is an initiative called the "European Entrepreneurial Region Award"45 which rewards good entrepreneurial strategies in a region or city. It would be interesting to develop a digital social economy strategy. Grassroots-level movements can only thrive if there is sufficient self-awareness and large-scale awareness about the social economy.

Mayo Fuster Morell – Director of Dimmons IN3 UOC and Promotor of the Procomuns.net Forum: The CAPs project is fantastic. But why do we label these initiatives as digital social innovation and not just economy, why do we put this part of economic life in a little box? Decentralisation is technologically feasible (and has been so for a while) but there is a lack of political will to support decentralisation. Why do we want to replicate the start-up/scale-up model for the social economy sector, why does it have to be framed in this way in order to be viewed as a credible alternative? Finally, how can the EU be credible when its former Commission President went on to work for Goldman Sachs and when it pushed austerity policies instead of reforming the financial system after the 2008 crisis?

Michel Catinat – Independent Expert: There are two completely different issues at stake: one, social enterprises should take up digital skills and technologies for efficiency and impact reasons, here we need a lot of training and to make sure it is accessible for social enterprises. Two, how do we ensure that the social economy enterprises have a role in and shape the platform collaborative economy? Here, small is not beautiful and only a large scale can work, but our European initiatives are too small-sized.

Nadine Muller – Counsellor – Ministère du travail, de l'emploi et de l'économie sociale et solidaire du Luxembourg: On the "digital social innovation" versus "digital social economy" debate: social innovation is not just about social economy actors. I also thought that there was too much focus put today on cooperatives and not enough on the specific forms that digital social innovation can take for

45 European Entrepreneurial Region – Committee of the Regions

associations, foundations. Finally, Luxembourg will host the International Labour Organization's Social and Solidarity Economy Academy46 in September, which will deal with digitalisation and new business models.

Fabrizio Sestini – Senior Expert – Next-Generation Internet - DG CNECT: Innovation is about more than just the economy – it touches upon policy and democracy. Cooperatives are indeed more prominent in the debate, maybe because they are seen as a clear embodiment of those principles of decentralisation into a legal enterprise form. Finally, we should not force scalability, at least not in economic terms – but there is however a need for a scaled up awareness, in order to scale up the overall impact.

Thomas Wobben – Director – Legislative Work - Committee of Regions: The Committee of the Regions understands itself as a platform for change and engagement, the EER Awards are indeed a fascinating approach – they reward strategies and not results, so as to put everyone on an equal footing. The Committee of the Regions has also just adopted its opinion on the collaborative economy, and we suggested the creation of a urban forum on this new economy – we need regulation but not so much so as not to stifle innovation. Regarding the scaling–up debate, the issue is about territorial rootedness and its importance – initiatives that manage to scale up without losing this local anchoring should be praised. I however believe that on non-economic terms, scaled-up initiatives do not perform so well. The Reflection Paper on Harnessing Globalisation is the first time this has been recognised at political level by the Commission.

Ulla Engelmann – Head of Unit – Clusters, Social Economy & Entrepreneurship - DG GROW: The reflection papers on the social dimension of Europe and on harnessing globalisation provide a crucial momentum as they open up for a larger discussion; this is a possibility for stakeholders to engage. The 2017 State of the Union speech in September and the November Gothenburg Social Summit for Fair Jobs and Growth47 are the next key dates. On the social innovation and social economy debate: it is also very terminological – they go hand in hand, if we adopt a larger approach, they both fit. We have created at the Commission an inter-service Task Force on the social economy, social enterprises and social innovation and we concentrate on what we can do together, we do not want to end up with a chicken and egg discussion. There are many models that could be looked into, not just cooperatives, and we are all ears for your suggestions – for instance, the links between social economy enterprises and traditional enterprises are also something we are looking into.

Denis Stokkink – Founder & President - Pour la Solidarité Think & Do Tank: The critical mass of an initiative is crucial: in order to gather sufficient investment, all the more for a digital strategy, a certain size needs to be reached. This is also needed in order to have a leverage effect on the rest of the economy. The social economy is about another way of doing business; it is not only about small-scale ventures.

46 International Labour Organisation – Social and Solidarity Economy Academy47 Social Summit for Fair Jobs and Growth