Co-creation spaces at universities as social innovation

The article analyses co-creation spaces at universities as a type of transformative social innovation. The overall aim of the article is to combine research about social innovation with research about community-based research and civil society empowerment by analyzing agency and dynamics in and empowerment from three types of initiatives with university-civil society cooperation: Science Shops, Desis Labs and Fab Labs. The article applies a framework for analyzing transformative social innovation that focuses on internal relations, the institutionalization process, and the interaction with the socio-material context. A framework is developed for analysis of such initiatives as spaces and has a focus on materiality, relations within the space and place-specific adaptation. Based on the case studies, the article identifies a number of aspects, which can characterize and distinguish different co-creation spaces involving universities and can support important choices in the planning of such new co-creation spaces. The identified aspects are: Needs for physical facilities, target groups, organizational model, participation of internal actors, relation to civil society, knowledge production, relations to university research and curricula, co-production with local university-society relations, and empowerment of civil society.