RRI Tools

Many Grand Social Challenge projects involve teams temporarily brought together with different forms of expertise, from different academic disciplines across social science and science and technology communities, as well as businesses, policy-makers citizens, NGOs and third sector organisations. These teams have to track their activities, reflect on what's happening, what's working and what's not. The Open Valuation Toolkit is designed to support the reflective process and to help the group develop those reflective practices as a collective, and from this to develop evaluative frames that keep them on track as their work unfolds.

Valuation in Open Innovation

Open, innovative teams thrive on new, disruptive ideas and rich, complex collaborations. Teams in ever-changing ground need to understand and articulate the value of their collaborative work. This demands consistent language about a team's work and its value, mapped to their unique capabilities.

To address this challenge Lancaster University researchers worked with the UK Government's Cabinet Office Open Innovation Team to develop tools for unpacking and analysing open innovation work. This toolbox is the result.

Using the toolbox

The tools in this toolbox have been divided up in to three toolpacks, each accompanied by a 'How to' guidelines document and accompanying slide deck.

• Toolpack 1 – Exploration
• Toolpack 2 – Explanation
• Toolpack 3 – Evaluation

Each toolpack can be used to help you to run a workshop with an open innovation team. These materails will help you think through how to run the workshop successfully and make it your own. You may wish to use just one of the toolpacks, or all in sequence.