Introduction: At the Intersection Social Innovation and Philosophy

Increasingly, designers are asked to play a role in innovation processes taking place in society, either by initiating new approaches to weave social tissue, by amplifying or scaling up existing initiatives or by creating the preconditions for these initiatives to prosper (Manzini 2014). In doing so, they touch upon new meanings and values that are about to emerge in society, often increasing their visibility and moving them towards the centre of our everyday lives. For instance, a new sense of community and citizenship emerges where designers attempt to increase citizen participation in co-designing new services for their cities. As time progresses, the meaning of notions such as politics, aesthetics and citizenship shift and designers need to adapt to these changes and help to initiate or steer the adaptation process. This raises important questions such as: Are we designers always aware of the cultural implications of our work? How to take these implications into account? Are we always aware of the shift of meanings and values to which we contribute when working on social innovation? Do we deal with it critically?