NewsSocial specialises in creating platforms for networks of cooperatives, social value businesses, and community organisations. Its key focus is on democratically developing solutions to mutual challenges and opportunities, promoting inter-cooperation, and building community wealth. NewsSocial Ltd was established in November 2014 by publishing industry veterans, reconstructed as of 20 July 2022 as a Cooperative Society dedicated to serving the sharing economy, by which cooperatives subscribing to the NewsSocial platform become stakeholders in the NewsSocial cooperative. NewsSocial, working with partners, seeks to empower members of social and business networks, changemakers, to arrive collectively and rapidly at solutions to developmental challenges and exploit opportunity to share creative ideas that can lead to mutual socio-economic benefit. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the absolute need for changemakers to collectively solve challenges that face society, developing democratic platforms for mutually beneficial social and business development, cooperating remotely in a distributed fashion. Our approach is based on the belief that ‘structured moderated ideation’ with the right platforms, practices, and knowledge objects offers a most efficient process for defining effective shared solutions to pressing socio-economic problems, and a more practical means to implement these solutions. The NewsSocial platform being developed will be game changing, helping to create a digital networked ecosystem for a 'Solution Revolution’ in localities, bringing together SMEs, local authorities, educational institutions and social enterprises. Put to work, the NewsSocial platform for group-ideation will encourage local wealth creation, contributing to a cooperative model of Community Wealth Building, creating valuable content for ideation, problem solving, and partnership and network building, leading to increased local wealth generation and retention.
