Abstract
This paper aims to reflect on the intersection of design education, research and social enterprise incubation within a design studio run as part of the Master in Product Service System Design at the Politecnico di Milano, School of Design. Entitled "Accidental Grocers", it aimed to explore the potentialities of Service Design applied to “Local Distribution Systems” to provide the city with local food. Students were requested to rethink the way we do food shopping and to propose services based on collaboration, making use of existing assets, and creating unusual connections between profit and not-for-profit, amateur and professional, market and society. As experienced in previous workshops at Politecnico di Milano and Tongji University, the studio was related to an on-going action research project to create short chain food services in a district of Milan. The aim was to develop ready-to-use solutions, establishing direct connections with citizens and local stakeholders, using methods of community centered design and simulating the conditions for incubation in a real context. This experimentation field functioned as a "protected environment" to test potential service start ups and to develop entrepreneurial teaching and learning practices.
Keywords
service design education, service design research, incubation, start up, social entrepreneurship, social innovation
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/learnxdesign.2013.132
Citation
Selloni, D.(2013) Design Schools as Incubators of Social Entrepreneurship, in Reitan, J.B., Lloyd, P., Bohemia, E., Nielsen, L.M., Digranes, I., & Lutnæs, E. (eds.), DRS // Cumulus: Design Learning for Tomorrow, 14-17 May, Oslo, Norway. https://doi.org/10.21606/learnxdesign.2013.132
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Design Schools as Incubators of Social Entrepreneurship
This paper aims to reflect on the intersection of design education, research and social enterprise incubation within a design studio run as part of the Master in Product Service System Design at the Politecnico di Milano, School of Design. Entitled "Accidental Grocers", it aimed to explore the potentialities of Service Design applied to “Local Distribution Systems” to provide the city with local food. Students were requested to rethink the way we do food shopping and to propose services based on collaboration, making use of existing assets, and creating unusual connections between profit and not-for-profit, amateur and professional, market and society. As experienced in previous workshops at Politecnico di Milano and Tongji University, the studio was related to an on-going action research project to create short chain food services in a district of Milan. The aim was to develop ready-to-use solutions, establishing direct connections with citizens and local stakeholders, using methods of community centered design and simulating the conditions for incubation in a real context. This experimentation field functioned as a "protected environment" to test potential service start ups and to develop entrepreneurial teaching and learning practices.