Opportunity or responsibility? Tracing co-creation in the European policy discourse

Abstract

Co-creation seems to be flourishing across innovation policy discourses: The concept suggests that engaging diverse actors throughout innovation processes will unlock new sources of innovation and conduce robust outcomes. While co-creation seems to embrace new and diverse participation opportunities, it is necessary to interrogate how it affects existing notions of public engagement. In this paper, we explore the discursive uptake of co-creation in European innovation policy. Drawing on a qualitative discourse analysis of European Union (EU) publications, we scrutinize the value propositions of co-creation and discuss them in light of the existing public engagement literature. We find that the EU tends to foreground alleged economic benefits of co-creation over questions of social justice. To that effect, it consistently conflates citizens, consumers, and users and blurs the line between self-motivated opportunity and democratic legitimacy. Countering the prevalent co-creation optimism, we propose a more nuanced outlook on co-creation that should prompt further scholarly inquiry.

Co-creation in Public Services for Innovation and Social Justice

“…Indeed, this in and of itself is a significant understatement. More recent takes on scaling of social innovation have critiqued the normative assumptions of the underlying political and economic rhetorics on scaling at the EU and national state level and the perversities these create for those undertaking such work (Ruess et al, 2023). Pfotenhauer et al (2022) identify three elements that in their analysis need to be addressed to provide a rebalancing of the dominant rhetorics: 'solutionism', 'experimentalism' and 'future-oriented valuation'.…”

“…The third element refers to the politics of scaling and the prevailing assumption that the 'future-orientated valuations' are economically dominated and privatised in the hands of a few powerful vested interests without wider considerations of the existing regulatory frameworks or norms of society. Considering a meaningful response to the challenges which these elements raise means '(we need) new visions of co-creation and for substantial deliberation on how participation and co-creation can be enabled in societies' (Ruess et al, 2023).…”

“…Arguments follow that social justice in order to be enacted should be redistributive in the development of the capacity building of capability (Pierik and Robeyns, 2007;Robeyns, 2017). Capability in these terms offers a way of making investments in humans and their environments which support the ongoing dynamic renewal of existing structures and communities in the face of complex issues (Teece et al, 1997;French et al, 2023;Ruess et al, 2023).…”

Maintaining innovation: How to make sewer robots and innovation policy work in Barcelona

“…PDTI epitomized several recent trends in innovation policy, all centered on the role of the state and the public sector in innovation. These include, for example, a growing interest in ‘Public Procurement of Innovation’ (PPI), the development of innovative solutions to public problems by state entities, often articulated in the form of ‘challenges’, in ‘Co-Creation’, the bringing-together of diverse stakeholders to foster socially beneficial innovation outcomes (Lipp et al, 2023; Ruess et al, 2023), and in ‘Mission-Driven Innovation’, the orchestration of public and private sector activities around ‘missions’ to steer innovation towards publicly beneficial outcomes (Kuhlmann & Rip, 2018; Mazzucato, 2019). The particular case of Barcelona sewer robotics experiments was seen as a trial of a potential template for how the European Union could identify crucial challenges from the public sector that could be solved with the help of innovation (such as robots) in the future.…”