Balancing value in networked social innovation

Innovation increasingly takes place through co-operation. Even more so in the case of social innovation, where profit and non-profit organisations collaborate to create solutions for societal issues. For these innovations to become successful, already early in the process it needs to be clear to the participating organisations that they will be able to gain value in return for their investments in the creation of the service proposition. This means that, together with the proposition, a business model needs to be designed, that provides insight in the feasibility and attractiveness of the total proposition, as well as in the value for the various participants separately. Building on existing methods, a 5-step approach was developed to support the process of refining the overall proposition together with the participating organisations, and at the same time checking the balance in value flow for each of them. This paper describes the approach to balance value in networked social innovations using one project as example.