Diffusing demand

The promotion of social innovation has tended to focus on the supply side and how innovations can be diffused among service providers through experts, intermediaries and collaboration. However, we argue that the design of services should start from the user, and that its diffusion should be approached from the perspective of users, not least because they are in many cases also co-producers. We also argue that a distinction should be made between services where demand can be expressed in the market (for fair trade or green goods for example), those where demand is expressed through the state (lobbying for disability provisions or swimming pools for example) and those involving intermediate demand (public commissioning on behalf of citizens).