Ideas for Change (IFC)
Ideas for Change (IFC) is a consulting and research company that works in the fields of innovation, business strategy and user-centred design. They have pioneered research on open strategies and exponential growth and consulted for big, medium and small size clients looking to transition to more contributive and open strategies while sustaining competitiveness. As part of its core business, IFC has developed frameworks to catalyse innovative solutions to social challenges through creative combinations of citizen participation, the economics of open data and collaborative distributed technologies and processes, such as Pentagrowth, The Bristol Approach, Future Proof Lab and Salus.coop.
Name: Mara Balestrini
Function: CEO Ideas for Change
Dr. Mara Balestrini. (Female) Human Computer Interaction (HCI) expert, partner and CEO at Ideas for Change. Mara earned a PhD in Computer Science at University College London (UCL). Mara has experience managing research projects that combine authentic civic engagement, open data and technology design. In collaboration with KWMC and Bristol City Council, she developed “The Bristol approach”, a commons-based framework for participatory data collection. Mara is a member of the UCL Engineering Exchange, where researchers collaborate with communities to develop situated and open technology solutions to local challenges.
Name: Javier Creus
Function: Founder of Ideas for Change
Javier is considered to be one of the primary strategists and thought leaders in collaborative economy, open and P2P business models, citizen innovation and the networked society. He led the @pentagrowth project, aimed to discover the key levers of exponential growth in organisations. Clients include Telefonica, Repsol, Leroy-Merlin, Accor, Transdev, Seat, Numa, Provenance or Bristol
City Council among others. He has previously worked as strategic planner, co-founder of Digital Mood incubator and @kubik multidisciplinary space and services marketing professor at ESADE. Co-author of “We are not ants”. Advisor at Ouishare and Secretary of the Open Knowledge Foundation in Spain.
Name: Valeria Righi
Function: Senior researcher at Ideas for Change
Valeria earned a PhD in Human Computer Interaction by Universitat Pompeu Fabra with a thesis on participatory design for active ageing. Her research has been conducted as part of a number of European and national projects, such as Life 2.0 (ICT-PSP- 270965) and WorthPlay (Fundación General CSIC). She has authored over 20 academic publications on topics related with participatory design with and for communities. Most recently, she has investigated the citizens’ perspective on health data sharing as part of Salus.coop, a project aimed at exploring the
viability of a citizen-led governance model of health data.