Below you’ll find the public poll for voting in the The Europas, the technology innovation awards for European tech companies, held on July 9 in London. You can only vote once for one entrant, so make it count. Your vote will be counted towards nominating the five finalists in this category. Voting closes Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST).
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I am really disappointed by the narrow choice and misunderstanding of the category “Social Innovation” by TechCrunch.
It is said “social”, not technological benefits, yet “innovation”. Where is it in the choices above, on greater social scale? Let me elaborate, as very active researcher on the topic. I apologize to the startups listed, I think they are great but are in the wrong category.
Decisions for Heroes is a commercial service. The society won’t benefit unless someone pays, yet there is absolutely no added value in the core service – only cutting bureaucracy and moving to SaaS. It’s good product, but in the wrong category. Absolutely nothing to do with social innovation, although I understand how one can get confused, word “rescue” being used =)
Dopplr is social networking, with tips and recommendations. Visualized and colorful, but nothing new. Not even close to social innovation. Very cool, loving it, but wrong place again.
Mendeley – note taking, even if social, is far from “social innovation.” If so, EverNote and Facebook should be here too. Researchers’ productivity suites are not something the society benefits from. Wrong category again, it is software, nothing to do with the society.
NewsCred? Not really. Credible sources are not those that “they” think. It’s what I think for myself, thus I don’t know how aggregation of news can be a social innovation? Does the society benefit from another news source, no matter what? Which problem does it solve?
School Of Everything? Now aggregation of teacher ads became a social innovation? Well then you missed a bunch of others.
Disclaimer: we are in this category, but at least we thought something really big will show up here, that we will learn from, where everyone will benefit from, but this is just plain disappointing.
There is nothing new in the ones listed above, and the benefit for society is obviously a matter of personal rationale and self-identification.
I wish you identified what the greater social benefit is from the ones above, and in the mean time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_innovation
Cheers,
-Dejan
If you can suggest some better ones then do so very very quickly and I may add them to the vote
My suggestion
http://www.knowledgeplaza.net/
their mosaics are brilliant
@tigressse
Dejan, I think you too might be thinking of this too narrowly. Just because a company like Decisions For Heros is a commercial venture, it doesn’t mean it’s not doing social good. In fact some of the most beneficial ventures in the world have been commercial. Also, just because you don’t feel NewsCred has the right approach doesn’t mean they haven’t tried to innovate how news is thought of.
(And no, I’m not directly involved with either company)
“Social Innovation” is a difficult term. I’m sure we all want to be doing that, in some way or other. Some in small ways, others with big ideas. Let’s give the companies credit for whatever they are trying to do.
Kristoffer, I do not think that being commercial is wrong, just that the listed services are not adding value to the society in the particular way as defined by social innovation. I agree that social innovation is a difficult term, but at least it starts from an existing problem in the society it tackles, yet if there is business on top of it, it is usually for more-than-profit, as means of sustainability (own case)
If it is news – what is the problem with the news in the society? I will for instance name one, the “actuality” of the news context, covering older facts with the actual news. Current search engines are very prone to this. We need search of news in own contexts, as it preserves the history of origins and vast wisdom of time.
If it is academic research – involve the people in research and let everyone contribute. The researcher should lead the open-source contribution to science for greater good.
Decisions for heroes – how can we give this to everyone so that rescuing is more effective, and be sustainable? And so on..
I do give high credit to the companies above, they are truly outstanding, my point is only that the category is maybe not so suitable. Sorry if it sounded otherwise.
Dejan, did you mean to suggest that enhanced research productivity doesn’t contribute at all to society?
Certainly sounds like it fits the bill, to me!
Hey Mr.Gunn, sure it does! The discussion is on the kind of the contribution, whether it is technological or sociological. It is not whether these startups are good, but whether they are in the right category. It is also a good discussion to improve the future startups categorization.
“Social innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds – from working conditions and education to community development and health – and that extend and strengthen civil society.” – Wikipedia
Oh and mike, it’d be great if I could still see the nominees after I’ve voted
Dejan,
Robin here from Decisions For Heroes, hi and thanks for your comments.
Sure, we are a commercial service, but we see charging a very small fee as key to providing a high quality service.
It is important to note that we are not a ‘for profit’ we are a ‘for more-than-profit’. Take a look at our ‘tangible human outcomes’ here http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/about
Our core service delivers new and powerful tools through consumer technology to rescuers who volunteer on-call 24/7 to save lives. At the heart of it, we are providing analysis of their data to give them statistics on how their team perform allowing them to optimize their training. Soon we will begin to collate missing person data, and attempt to create predictions on their location weighted by localised result sets. We will connect rescuers from flank teams, allowing them for the first time to get a live view of the resources surrounding them. This is new – this is serious social innovation – as we say “we save lives”.
Vote for D4H!
-Robin.
Hi Robin, thanks for responding.
I appreciate Decisions for Heroes, and I truly think it is great. However, IMHO, I don’t think it can be classified as a social innovation. As mentioned before above, Social Innovation really is a difficult term with wide meaning, but you wouldn’t call an airbag a social innovation. Sure it saves lives, and we want it, but it wouldn’t be here. I think that there should be another category for Best Social Tool/Service, and if so, my vote goes undisputed to you.
It is a truly great tool, but social innovation should be more about empowering individuals and solving society’s problems – Kiva.com, ChangeMakers.com..
I guess next year it would be better to define the categories a bit better
Dejan – you do a lot of talking but not a lot of suggesting. I am willing to add companies to the poll if you list EUROPEAN ones which I think fit the awards. You have 1 hr.
I’ve given a suggestion with the first post (Aleveo). Taken the category stays so diversified, here are some other suggestions:
http://bushfirehousing.org
http://www.arkchangeyourworld.com – online shop as a social innovation
I hope it helps!
Hi Dejan,
Here’s a bit more about what we’re trying to do with School of Everything:
http://schoolofeverything.com/about/thebigidea
We’re certainly not just trying to aggregate teaching ads as you suggest. If we succeed we’ll have changed the way education is organised for the better and that for me is what social innovation is about.
Also would be interested to know what you think of Social Innovation Camp (http://www.sicamp.org).
All best,
Paul (School of Everything)
Hi Paul, I’ve read it and concur. I am very interested in your project, and do think you guys are doing a great job with both (&SICamp)
I am raising a very important question here, of a social value of online tools, that I think will haunt me for a long time. I see SICamp, as a concept, truly a social innovation – giving people the chance, tools and support to do other things for common welfare. If that were to be empowered by an online tool for all to participate, wouldn’t you say it belonged in this category? The point is that it has a strong background and an idea that overcomes “tools.”
I can’t see that so clear with School of Everything. It’s in the right category as for what it wants to become but I think the background concept should be strengthened a bit more to be truly sustainable as a social idea.
This category is among the shortest ones here and I think the reason for that is the lack of understanding of the differences of tools and social innovations. Once we figure that out, it will for sure be easier to build tools that will support those ideas, for a greater good I hope =)
I’ve just put up a blog post on the topic, why a “tool” should be considered different than a social innovation, so I won’t repeat myself → http://blog.aleveo.com/
All the best and good luck with both projects, I’ll be following.
- Dejan / Aleveo.com
Dejan – this is Shafqat from NewsCred here. Just wanted to clarify something very important: you mentioned that *we* decide what’s credible. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Our entire philosophy is based on the fact that news readers should be given a platform to voice their opinion on the quality of news. We provide a channel for people to read, discuss and rate news articles, journalists and sources.
We always appreciate feedback and any constructive criticism. But leaving our particular product aside, surely you will agree that free, credible and unbiased news is a cornerstone of democracy. The events of recent weeks have only highlighted how important it is for our society to have access to accurate news about the events that are shaping our world.
We are very conscious of this significant challenge and are deeply concerned with finding a solution to the issue of media credibility, whether the news is produced from major mainstream sources or independent citizens in the streets. It’s not an easy problem to solve, but I hope you agree that it’s an important one.
I am somehow missing Amazee.com in this list!
Amazee is on now.
What about services like linqia, chi.mp and yiid.com ?
I think Peuplade would fit the bill:
http://www.peuplade.fr/
BBC wrote an article about it a couple of years ago:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6233429.stm
Unfortunatly available in French only up to now. I would love to see the creators of Peuplade make an English version. Meanwhile, I have been looking for something similar in English for years now and tried a couple of website, but didn’t find anything that good.
I know School of Everything and I really like the concept but it feels like its spirit is getting lost amongst the many users who are just using it to sell their services.
Peuplade is even more interesting and successful and has kept a feel of a social network “with a difference”.
My vote goes to Peuplade, even if it is not in the list yet (and I am confident many French votes would go to it if it was on the list).
I will post this to TechCrunch France (TCFR) to see if other would like to see Peuplade in the list too.
hallo mike!
i´d also propose the austrian start.up:
http://www.emailcharity.com/uk/
they provide a service to raise funds for charitable causes of your choice by adding ads to emails. e.g. recently used by http://www.lifeball.org
best
hannes a.
@Hannes
Thanks for mentioning http://www.emailcharity.com
Btw, you can get a better overview of the organisations participating if you switch the region to http://www.emailcharity.com/at/ since the site is mostly for the german-speaking region so far.
well, if you know companies that would be sponsoring just let them know, I guess they will be grateful.
I installed it and it really looks good…
thanx for this hint
Some suggestions:
Amazee
UnLtdWorld
ViaPost
Worldeka
How about a collaborative Public Libraries service – assists in fulfilling a social need – access to information that is free to the user when the library is open and if you can’t get to it, or when your local library is closed? Access to local information, informal learning, formal learning, and is socially and digitally inclusive: http://www.askalibrarian.org.uk
[80 participating library authorities in England and Scotland]
Thanks for adding my suggestion ( http://www.peuplade.fr ) to the list!
What about the new and very bootstrapped Lovebox – digital wristband???
Check out their website http://www.lovebox.org.uk
Michael
I second http://www.lovebox.org.uk – great causes and strikes the right chord with todays social media-centric world – should be a staple for this kind of poll
How about Mysociety, specifically, their TheyWorkForYou
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
le meilleur c est busuu.com
superbe bien fait que dire continuer
merci a tout les personnes qui s occupent de se site et principalement au fondateur
longue vie a busuu.com
parternership
Dear people of Ireland,
Please vote today with “NO” reg. the “Lisbon Treaty” This hole paper is just a crime.
I wrote this message from Germany to you. One of the most unfree countries in the EU. We Germans like a lot of another European countries having not the chance to vote our opinion about this
criminal EU organisations and his criminal intend to bring the rest of the almost free European
countries like you.. my dear lovely Irish people.. into a system of EU dictatorship and total political control..
Fight for your freedom and political self-administration and even by doing this for “Our” freedom and political self-administration.
Vote – “NO”
All my best
Condor