Towards a Network of Co-working Spaces for Social Innovation in Mountain Areas

Depopulation and the consequent erosion of local expertise hinder the sustainable growth of the mountain areas. The reduction of work force and of talent negatively affects the local enterprises, and in particular their power of innovation, creating a divide with those that are located in the urban centers, whose greater richness of services and of choice creates a more fertile, and thus more attractive, environment especially for young people. In order to invert the trend, there is the need to create the conditions for triggering social innovation, that is, to let new strategies, initiatives, processes, or organizations emerge that meet social needs and that cause radical changes in the social system. The proposal presented in this paper embraces this assumption and explores a novel approach, consisting in the establishment of specialized networks of co-working spaces as a regional development tool. Specifically: 1) we describe a socio-technical framework supporting the creation of networks of co-working spaces and we model its effects by way of game theory; 2) we elicit a set of requirements that can guide the development of an actual platform, supporting the creation of networks of co-working spaces, which can flexibly accommodate many organizational models.