Fab lab-oriented innovation: an empirical study on the ecosystem approach to grow digital social innovations (DSIs) in Italy

This doctoral thesis investigates the preconditions endemic to geography and community potentially favoring the emergence and diffusion of novel forms of digital social innovation, particularly elicited by the ‘Maker Movement’. More specifically, it seeks to identify regional-embedded key factors that might have led to the emergence and characterization, in the Italian context, of Fab Lab-oriented social innovation ecosystems (SIEs). The Social Innovation Ecosystem theory and model, developed in previous studies was used to build the empirical model of social innovation based on Fab Labs. A multi-dimensional ecosystem framework (Social Innovation creation, Geography, Societal Climate and Knowledge Infrastructure) was adopted to model multi-scale regional endogenous conditions. The decision to select the regional level as the analytical unit is due to both data availability issues and further due to the large scope of the study which seeks to cover the phenomenon nationally whilst yielding generalization of the results. The author adopts as units of analysis the number of social innovation sources (Fab Labs) observed in each Region and then interprets the phenomenon across the geographical areas of Northern, Central and Southern of Italy. An exploratory survey of 89 active Fab Labs (stratified sample) provided insights on the phenomenon characterized by strong internal differentiation across regional areas. A quantitative approach is employed to examine postulated relations between context indicators and distribution of Fab Labs among regional settings. The study is the ‘first-of-itskind’ due to the substantially unexplored ‘empirical way’ to investigate a nascent phenomenon associated to social innovation. Nevertheless, the study entails several limitations which are mainly consistent with the experimental nature of the investigation and with the novelty of the research field. Results from the univariate and bivariate analysis suggest that close proximity to knowledge assets, density, and connectedness characterizing urban environments are the avenue for the growth of Fab Lab-led social innovation. Similarly, key findings of the multi-dimensional analysis indicate that Fab Labs’ ecosystem variation (Fab Lab’ occurrence and characterization) across geographical areas is significantly explained by the regional concentration of Higher-Educational Institutions, thus included as a strong explanatory factor within the model. The concentration of Labs across regions is hence statistically explained by the presence and availability of knowledge-based regional resources, which provide multi-scale support to collaborative innovations. Potentially relevant are the implications of the ecosystem approach as a basis for further in-depth analysis and, particularly for public policies as a means to foster social innovation in the direction of ‘Making-wide activities’.