Collaborative services from Europe to China

This paper shows that the typical social innovation projects emerging in Europe (EMUDE 2006), which include community support for agriculture, carpooling and group purchasing, are also presented in China (CCSL 2007). This paper compares Chinese grassroots social innovations modeled as collaborative services with representative European cases. Three common service ideas and three corresponding pairs of cases are compared to provide insight into the range of activity in China and Europe. The cross-case comparisons show that in China the same service ideas occur, but emerge in relation to different local contexts, participants, motivations, service systems and infrastructure to those in Europe and have different impacts. In response to these findings, the paper proposes that different strategies should drive design intervention in Chinese social innovation initiatives where the development and promotion of collaborative services seeks to achieve sustainable lifestyle.