People olympics for social innovation: Co-creating the silver sharing economy for the aging society

Abstract

The emergence of unprecedented societal challenges for the humanity, as it is the case for health and wellbeing in an aging society, calls for a new extraordinary participation of the people in the innovation process. New multidisciplinary approaches, at the confluence of design, technology and life sciences, are being established to enable social innovations, which are not only good for society but also enhance society capacity to act. Social Innovation Platforms are People Driven Innovation ecosystems for societal change at large, with the objective of focusing collective intelligence to the joint intent of addressing today global societal challenges. In this paper, the principles of People Olympics for Social Innovation are discussed in relation to the Responsible Research and Innovation required for co-creating a new concept: the Silver Sharing Economy (SSE) for the Aging Society. SSE proposes a methodology based on Collaborative Innovation principles aimed to support citizens who are making the life transforming transition to retirement and to the decline of physical and mental abilities, to engage in silver product-services innovation, through a solution based on the co-creation and co-delivery of those product-services.