Collaborative economy report response: June 2018

6. Social Value In The Collaborative Economy

The Panel highlighted the public appetite for digital collaborative platforms that promote good causes. It identified opportunities for innovation including scaling community transport and more socially orientated business models. The Panel indicated that despite a supportive ecosystem and tradition of community co-operation there has been relatively limited experimentation to create social value.

The Panel recommended:

• Action to accelerate the development of mission-led businesses and social enterprises using collaborative platforms.
• Continued action in line with Scotland’s Social Enterprise Strategy 2016-26 to develop new approaches to support peer to peer collaborations between social enterprise, such as sharing assets and resources.

Scottish Government response

The Scottish Government welcomes the focus that the Panel put on the role that the collaborative economy can play in supporting a more inclusive and socially responsible economy. We note the Panel’s positive view of the existing ecosystem to support this and its recognition of Scotland’s strong ethos of community collaboration. We support the Panel’s view that there is an opportunity to encourage and further support experimentation of new technologies to take advantage of this and deliver public benefits in Scotland.

As highlighted in section 1.2 we have already taken action to start building the pool of collaborative platforms with the launch of a new Scottish collaborative platform fund. ShareLab Scotland will support organisations to develop and test collaborative digital platform models that benefit individuals and communities in Scotland.

In the energy sector we are seeing crowdfunding being used to support community owned renewable energy generation through community share offers.

BroomPower community hydroscheme, which began generating electricity in November 2017, is a community renewables scheme for the Lochbroom area of the Scottish North West Highlands. Funding for the design and build of the hydroscheme was primarily raised through the sale of community shares. After four months of fundraising, the scheme reached its target of £900,000 in September 2016. The hydro is owned and run by Lochbroom Community Renewables Ltd, a Community Benefit Society, set up by Ullapool Community Trust ( UCT) to identify and run renewable energy projects. It is staffed entirely by volunteers. The surplus from the BroomPower scheme will be paid into a Community Benefit Fund to support projects across the Ullapool Community Trust area.

As an outward facing nation, Scotland is keen to share its experience of supporting social enterprises with others. This was one of the factors which led to the launch of the Social Enterprise World Forum in Scotland in 2008.

In its tenth anniversary year, the Social Enterprise World Forum will return to Edinburgh in September 2018 with the Scottish Government being the main sponsor of the event. The conference track on “Big Economic Issues” will provide an opportunity to discuss the Collaborative Economy in the context of Social Enterprise and hear from experts in the field.

Next steps

• We will work with the organisers of the Social Enterprise World Forum to showcase our work on the collaborative
  economy.
• We are exploring further how we can support peer to peer collaborations between social enterprise using collaborative technologies such as the CivTech challenge.