PeaceWare – ICT, design, and social entrepreneurship

[PeaceWare]: Going global; Design and ICT for development

BlåHimmel has co-sponsored an academic/private sector/NGO partnership to examine the potential for global partnerships for developing innovative solutions to ICT design problems in the developing world comprising business, civil society and research.
Lars went with Anders Michelsen from Copenhagen University on a research trip to Colombo to work out the concept together with our partners there: A small innovative IT company: Infoshare. The project is now establishing the institutional framework, presently represented by:
- The Aarhus School of Architecture, – a Danish design and architecture college, now developing a strategy for global engagement, and with a commitment to mode 2 research and process design.
- InfoShare, Sri Lanka, a non-profit technical support organization providing web media services and application development to GOs and NGOs in the development sector.
- Zentropa WorkZ – an innovation company in Copenhagen (part of Zentropa, Scandinavia’s biggest film group), specializing in idea development and innovation processes based on methodologies from the creative industries.
- Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, focusing on central aspects of modern culture based on studies of visual culture, aesthetics, theater, art, design, music, relating to computer media and the internet.

Working premises of the pre-project:
- Tagcloud: process-design, open-source, civil-society-2.0, creative-commons, network-economy, global-entrepreneurship, sustainable-development
- New innovation formats for sustainable development is needed.
- Social entrepreneurship provides a progressive and sustainable alternative to the donor driven development system.
- ICT design in development has big potential for direct positive social impact.
- “Mode 2 research” is on the agenda in research and business, but concrete models, not least for global mode 2 needs to be developed and role models established.
- A true interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral (triple helix) structure, will provide the biggest potential for innovation.
- New media technologies can provide both a working method (ie. internet networks and cscw), and product focus.
- Design must be seen in an expanded view where by the novel research agenda of involving e.g. culture, anthropology, management, constitutes a potential for contributions to new innovations formats.
- Denmark has potential for system exports (process design); Danish social entrepreneurship on a global stage however has still to be developed.