Many ESSI members or co-operation partners offer advice, ample information, network background or other types of support to social innovation initiatives. Or they themselves form part of such an initiative; as an example, see our documents for Tilburg, e.g., The Brabant Alliance or the Social Innovation ecosystem.

We have chosen to focus our attention to initiatives and practices dedicated to civil society and the public area, although not excluding economic and entrepreneurial examples. Hence, for us and in the framework of social innovation, co-creation is a method of joint design, production or delivery of new answers to social problems. Actors from different areas of society, including public authorities, co-operate in order to provide innovative approaches, products, services or meaning where individual efforts have remained not or not sufficiently successful.