Designing with stakeholders during social innovation projects: a mapping and analysis tool

During co-innovation projects multiple agencies, organizations, internal and external groups, and communities collaborate in a complex situation to develop mutual value and social improvement. During these projects it is important that the project community is able to conceptualise the network that they rely upon and impact. Established network mapping and analysis practices and tools are objective and evaluative in nature and do not support mapping that is generative, undertaken as a community and explorative. This research sought to address that challenge and answer the question: what re-usable technique, with scripted procedures, supports generative stakeholder analysis and supports the principle of an empathic project community? Students and academics, during a series of social improvement projects, following a design-led multidisciplinary innovation process within which a dynamic stakeholder mapping tool has been developed. This research reports on the tool’s iterative development and evaluation. The research established a successful procedure for stakeholder mapping which demonstrated that involving stakeholders in the identification and analysis process allows for a deep and rich stakeholder map to emerge that is focused upon individuals and reciprocal perspectives.