To identify phases and dynamics of the process of digitally supported social innovation in villages with different types of digital initiatives, we chose five villages in Germany that were discursively labelled as innovative either by the actors themselves or by third parties (cf. Hutter/Knoblauch/Rammert et al. 2018). During the case selection – that started at the beginning of 2019 with a mapping of 59 rural digital initiatives – we found a great heterogeneity of digital initiatives in rural areas in Germany.

For a deeper insight into the process of case selection see Sept (2020).

Methodologically, our research is based on a focused ethnography (cf. Knoblauch 2005), combining participant observations in the village communities, expert interviews (with local and external experts) and problem-centred interviews with local actors and residents, as well as document analysis. The fieldwork in the villages, including face-to-face interviews, was carried out between July 2019 and February 2020. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, further interviews were conducted by telephone or as video conferences between March 2020 and February 2021. Next to the semi-structured, problem-centred interviews (cf. Witzel 2000), we conducted participant observations (cf. Atkinson/Hammersley 1994) during local digitalisation courses and special events (such as a summer festival, the formal delivery of a shared village car and networking events). We took a “field-observer role” (cf. Knoblauch 2005) during our observations, with a focused approach over several short-term field visits during which we concentrated on observing digital practices, practices related to digitalisation and conversations about digital initiatives.

Altogether, the empirical material includes 63 interviews, 105 documents and 36 pages of observation protocols. For the data analysis, the material was subjected to grounded theory coding (cf. Strauss/Corbin 1997) in alignment with the research questions. Joint data sessions between the team members responsible for specific cases enabled a cross-case analysis and, at the same time, led to a deeper understanding of the individual cases.

In the following, the five villages selected are described in order to provide an insight into the challenges they face, the main actors involved, and particularly the socially innovative solutions developed (see Figure 1). In terms of our research questions, we answer the question of what digitally supported, socially innovative initiatives are about. In addition, we offer an impression of the dynamics that have unfolded concerning the issues addressed. It should also be noted in advance that in all chosen cases, the digitally supported, socially innovative initiatives started around 2016 and 2017. In some cases, initial approaches to socially innovative activities can also be observed beforehand, but these did not yet have a digital component.

In Blaurow, which stands for an individual village project in the region, the initiatives are mainly driven by a couple who moved to the village, bought the property of the former village shop, and transformed it into a public multi-use space with open Wi-Fi. They did this to create a meeting place for the residents and to address the challenge of very poor mobile internet access in the village. Gradually, they began to actively engage in the local community – in 2016 one of them became the new head of the village and the other became the chairperson of the village association. After a tip-off from a district employee, the village, represented by the village association and the village head, took part in the competition called “Our village has a future” at the district level. They surprisingly won and thus qualified for the village competition in the federal state of Brandenburg. Preparing for this level of the competition, the group started to really “think about the village, where is it going?” (D1_I02). Through their discussions, they recognised that “digitalisation is the opportunity par excellence for villages” (D1_I02), which is why they subsequently developed ideas on how to use digitalisation to further develop the village. This resulted in the creation of a digital strategy for Blaurow. They submitted the strategy to the Brandenburg-wide village competition and won a special award.

Little by little they started to implement their ideas for action and to apply for additional funding. Together with the district’s adult education centre, a village digitalisation course was set up to prepare villagers to confidently and safely use computers, smartphones and apps, as this proved to be an important prerequisite for the introduction of digitally supported novel solutions to the challenges that existed in the village.

Later on, the village association successfully applied for funding to buy an e‑car for village car-sharing in order to address mobility issues and to reduce the number of privately owned cars. Since 2020, the car can be booked and billed via a smartphone app. In 2020, funding started for another project called “Senior citizens and digital change” to buy a computer and a tablet that can be easily borrowed by elderly people. To improve communication in the village, which had also proved problematic in the past, the village head started a WhatsApp broadcast to quickly spread information in the village community, the village’s website has been relaunched and the quarterly village magazine is now also available online. During the pandemic, the meetings of the village association were held online and elderly members also participated. In summary, one could say that Blaurow – having started from a small idea – is gradually developing into a digital village and is permanently driving digital transformation to strengthen the community.

The digital initiative in Kürb-Ries started with a conference on the future of the village that was organised by the municipal mayor in April 2017. The two-day workshop was considered to be particularly successful as more than 100 people from the village community participated in order to identify problems and opportunities and to develop measures for the future of the village. The participants identified, among other things, a lack of meeting places and poor communication in the village as their main problems. To improve the situation, some residents founded the working group “communication and information”. Their big question was how to improve communication in the village without opening a new physical meeting place. “And since we are now in the digital age here, my idea was directly, we have to get something digital,” explains one member of the group (D4_I10). After researching a variety of digital tools on the internet, the group contacted a research institute that had been developing a village talk app since 2015 as part of a pilot project. The group’s wish to use this app, with some specific adaptations, was met with open ears. At the end of 2018, the slightly adapted village talk app was made available in Kürb-Ries. According to our interview partners, information and communication on everyday issues of village life have definitely been improved, and the app also offers new topics for spontaneous conversations on the street.

The largest social innovation case is a joint initiative by Schiebitz and Pfauenau. Schiebitz/Pfauenau is part of the pilot project “Digital Village” that took place between 2016 and 2021, and was financed by the Bavarian Ministry of Economics, with the involvement of other departments. The project management, development, programming and implementation of the applications is handled by a technology campus, which also came up with the idea for the project. The goal of the “Digital Village” is “to address the question of how digital solutions can be helpful to face challenges of rural areas, and how they can be a part of the public welfare and service” (D5_I06). Within three consecutive phases of realisation, the pilot communities little by little tried out measures across 12 different fields of action, such as demographic change, mobility and migration. The results of the projects are used to test and improve digital measures, with the goal of disseminating the most successful ones over the whole of Bavaria in the future. For the joint initiative of Schiebitz/Pfauenau, the mayor of Schiebitz has taken on a central role. He combines his motivation to present his village as modern and forward thinking with his former experience in the field of digitalisation and in writing applications. Together with the mayor of Pfauenau and experts from the fields of administration and digitalisation, he authored a professionally written 80-page application to become a pilot for the “Digital Village” project. In the application they described their ideas about fields of action for digital measures and specific digital apps to improve village life. When their application was successful, Schiebitz/Pfauenau became one of the “Digital Village” pilots. The measures included, but were not limited to, digital medical counselling, a digital village bus app, a digital platform for information and administrative purposes, digital literacy courses for elderly people, digital neighbourhood assistance and a rural co-working space.

Weitlitz is one of 16 villages that were selected to take part in the “Digital Countryside” project between 2016 and 2019. “Digital Countryside” took place in two districts of North Rhine-Westphalia, financed by the EU and the federal state. The project aimed to “bring the benefits of digitalisation into the rural areas. […T]he villages especially struggle with demographic change, migration flow towards the cities and many villages are isolated in terms of mobility. Therefore, the goal of DC is to use digitalisation for new opportunities to make the rural areas fit for the future” (D3_I02).

In Weitlitz, a combination of circumstances led to involvement in “Digital Countryside”. In 2017, volunteers from the so-called village workshop developed a plan called “Weitlitz 2020” that addressed topics like tourism, demographic change and infrastructure. In the same year, Weitlitz’s internet connection was upgraded. At the same time, the very committed local historian and head of the village workshop retired and was able to engage even more. During the same period, the mayor of the municipality announced the invitation for participation in the “Digital Countryside” project. The village workshop then modified its original “Weitlitz 2020” plan, envisaged digital measures for the previously defined fields of action and developed an application for the joint project “Digital Countryside”. The measures that were developed and realised in Weitlitz are part of the action fields of “demographic change” and “digital infrastructure”. Against this background, a village emergency app for elderly people living alone was developed and implemented in cooperation with a small tech start-up. Internet courses for the elderly were organised by villagers, for villagers. Furthermore, a village talk app, programmed by an institute for applied research, was adapted to the needs and requirements of the villagers. The community building was equipped with smart home technology, Wi-Fi and hardware for the internet courses. The experience gained has led to a spatial dissemination of components of the project, with the most successful measures now being implemented in several other villages in the federal state.

Graupelow is a small village belonging to a rural municipality that has won several awards and funding projects since 2018, such as being recognised as a “smart community” in Brandenburg and a “smart region” at the federal level. However, everything started in Graupelow with the arrival of a group of young social entrepreneurs. In 2017 they bought the former manor house and transformed it into a centre for co-working and (temporary) co-living. Their main idea was that rural Brandenburg can provide an attractive escape for stressed urbanites and (international) digital nomads working remotely. Graupelow not only offered an attractive building for their activities but also high-speed internet, which was a major locational advantage. To buy the building they had to convince the municipality of their concept, and thus from the beginning were in direct contact with the municipal administration and local politicians. According to the municipality’s newly established digitalisation commissioner, the opening of the place is “the root of all things here around digitalisation” (D2_I02). In addition to their own business activities, the social entrepreneurs supported the municipality with an application for a “smart community competition”, developing a vision to become a smart and digitally supported rural region. After winning this competition, several digital projects were carried out, such as the implementation of a village app and a YouTube channel for improving local information, and a programming club for teenagers. The village app was considered especially useful, also by the federal state, and has now been adopted by other municipalities. Under the umbrella of subsequently acquired national funding as a “smart region”, an expansion of digital projects has been pushed forward, focusing on the areas of health and mobility but also on tourism and culture. For instance, an augmented reality art walk around Graupelow is currently being developed. These later activities are, at the same time, national pilot projects testing new digital measures which may also be disseminated to other rural regions if they prove successful. The social entrepreneurs recognised the opportunity and need for action, met with two open-minded mayors, and in collaboration started digitalisation projects, first in the village of Graupelow and then throughout the whole region.

All in all, while Weitlitz and Schiebitz/Pfauenau started as professionally managed digitalisation projects with an overarching action concept, the other three villages developed one (Kürb-Ries) or even several digitally supported innovative initiatives step by step and with different funding programmes. In Graupelow, this led to the village becoming part of professional digitalisation projects in the region and even beyond at a later stage.

With regard to our research questions, our study shows that there are commonalities between some of the initiatives in terms of the challenges addressed (topics like internet access, digital competence, village communication and demographic change). Most of the rural communities, however, tackled a very broad range of different challenges (see Figure 1). Initially, the challenges addressed were those that were considered most urgent by the local actors. In the course of their work, other issues were added. It turned out that working on a solution for one problem often triggered the development of further approaches for other thematically related problems. It can thus already be seen here that such processes often involve very dynamic, thematically expanding project development.

During the inspiration phase, this inception impulse is taken up. In the village communities, existing local problems are typically discussed and prioritised against the background of an opening window of opportunity. The various challenges that the five communities have brought to the fore have already been named above (to repeat just a few: problems with internet access, stunted village communication, the low digital competences of residents, mobility issues, healthcare, ageing of the population; see Section 3.2 and Figure 1).

Additionally, it has become clear that new constellations of actors could often be observed at the beginning of the initiatives: in Blaurow a couple moved into the village and played an important role, in Schiebitz/Pfauenau it was external actors from a research institute who helped to push things forward, in Weitlitz the village chronicler had more time at his disposal due to his retirement, and in Graupelow young social entrepreneurs came to the area and became very active together with local actors. The initiatives benefited greatly from these core groups of actors who took on responsibilities and also managed the process as it proceeded to further phases.

With regard to the windows of opportunity, which are also of central importance for initiatives, the organisation of a future conference (Kürb-Ries), a call for tenders within the framework of a competitive funding programme (Blaurow, Schiebitz/Pfauenau, Weitlitz), and certain favourable local conditions where good broadband infrastructure and suitable real estate already existed (Graupelow) proved to be very helpful in getting a digitally supported novel solution for the village off the ground. Therefore, it became particularly clear that village communities often do not act in isolation but are supported by other actors, in particular by public agencies.

While in Weitlitz, Schiebitz/Pfauenau and Graupelow the focus of the inspiration phase was always very specifically on developing novel solutions that actively used digital technologies, in Blaurow and Kürb-Ries it was initially still about strengthening the local village community and finding novel solutions to current problems in general, which later led to digital solutions.

In Kürb-Ries the actors describe the conference on the future as a very clear initial spark for their initiatives: “The origin was that in this future conference in April 2017, various pain points within the village were thrown up and identified” (D4_I10) and “through this a working group was formed – Information [and] Communication” (D4_I04).

In Blaurow, the village competition was seen as the decisive impetus: “Well, it all started with the participation in the district competition ‘Our village has a future’. [...] And then we asked ourselves the question, what future does this village actually have? [...] This really started an avalanche, of which we had no idea, of course” (D1_I01). We can also find a similarly clear understanding of the starting points in Schiebitz/Pfauenau and Weitlitz, where the focus was on more strategically addressing opportunities that arose for their villages through digitalisation. The mayor of Schiebitz/Pfauenau told us that “the idea for the project was this competition” (D5_I02). With regard to the villages’ first initiative, the project manager confirmed that “they practically submitted a project outline. It simply stated why they wanted to carry out digitalisation measures. Just a bit of digital vision, the goals, what they want to achieve with it, the initial situation in the villages” (D5_I06). In Weitlitz the call for participation within the “Digital Countryside” project opened a window of opportunity for financing village development, “and for this reason we simply applied and said to ourselves that this would be an ideal addition to our original Action Plan 2020 for village development. […] But now we have sharpened up this Action Plan 2020 with digital projects” (D3_I01).

For Graupelow, the situation was a bit different. The starting point there was a group of social entrepreneurs, the majority of whom were not from the area. At the very beginning they were only thinking of somehow combining tourism and co-working somewhere in the countryside. In search of a place, they stumbled across Graupelow, which offered a window of opportunity for their social innovation. It promised both well-developed digital infrastructure in the surrounding area and a very suitable property, which were both interesting for the further development of the project idea. In the inspiration phase, the young social entrepreneurs tended to show behaviour that is typical of entrepreneurial action: they first began with market exploration, team building and finally a business plan. The end of this phase was clearly marked for the team: “And then at some point you come to the point: we’re going to do it now” (D2_I01.1).

Overall, our research has shown that although the inspiration phase still ends with more or less vague ideas for digital tools or actions, the specific challenges on the ground have been clearly identified and analysed so they can be tackled in a novel way. The main direction for further action has been set, the group of driving actors has been formed, and in some cases funding opportunities for further development have also been found.

In the second phase, which we call the emergence phase, further planning takes place, i.e. the goals are concretised, the ideas for solutions are profiled, and the first implementations of the ideas take place and are tested. In the initiatives, we observed that planning and realisation are not separate phases but go hand in hand. In the emergence phase, which now refers specifically to digital solutions, various digital tools are identified that can be helpful in overcoming the existing challenges and promise good solutions. Typically, local communities (together with public bodies) actively look for technical developers who offer, or are able to develop, the desired tools, which are then adapted or newly programmed to address the specific needs on the basis of intensive communicative processes. While the activities that took place in the inspiration phase had a more linear course, the emergence phase, in which the desired solutions were concretely developed, often ran in loops. The villagers tended to experiment. They tried something, adapted and changed it, and even created new ideas for another project or digital tool. Moreover, the approaches to a solution were often not only further developed during the process, but sometimes even expanded in terms of content in various development loops. The process of the emergence phase, thus, had more of a cyclical character.

Kürb-Ries had the most straightforward project course. There, the emergence phase was characterised by searching for the right village communication app, contacting different research institutions, and discussing different technical functions and finances, as well as the final online launch. “We had two or three serious alternatives for communication options and then quickly realised that [this research institution] is already on exactly the right track with this digital village project. […] we expressed our wishes, some of which were also taken into account” (D4_I10). Altogether, this process of planning and implementation was mainly undertaken by the local communication working group and the developers, and “very quickly this was implemented” (D4_I04).

Weitlitz went through a similar process to Kürb-Ries in finding a communication app, but there were further fields of action: the actors also started to conceptualise a village emergency app and established cooperation with a developer. Additionally, they started attending training-of-trainers courses in order to be able to offer internet courses for elderly villagers in the future. In a further emergence loop, they drew inspiration from other villages on how to equip and realise a digital community hall, and on this basis developed their concept for a smart building. These different emergence loops did not happen simultaneously nor one after the other but overlapped.

In Blaurow and Schiebitz/Pfauenau the emergence phase appears less focused, more experimental and probing. The Blaurow village community, first of all, used the prize money to buy a beamer and a screen for their community centre, and started to plan the digitalisation course “for all those who have little or no experience in this area” (D1_I01). In parallel, a car-sharing project was set up and required an app for booking and billing. Similar to the working groups in Kürb-Ries and Weitlitz, the villagers started screening digital tools for car-sharing and chose a professional developer who was willing to adapt the tool for their specific needs as a small village with only one car to manage.

The digital village project, in which Schiebitz/Pfauenau was involved, generated three loops. The first one was about evaluating and deciding on the best project ideas submitted for the competition. “Stage 2, the first implementation phase, was about setting up, testing and implementing the digitalisation concept in one municipality or one association of municipalities. The concept was then developed, so to speak, and also realised and rolled out. And in Stage 3, further fields of action were served and the implementation measures that had already been started in Stage 2 were continued. […] When we then went into implementation, people were always invited to the working group at the beginning, or to a first meeting and from there working groups were formed” (D5_I06).

For Graupelow the first loop involved the purchase and opening of the former manor house as a co-working space. However, with a new window of opportunity – a digital village competition – another loop started with the social entrepreneurs and the public administration as the central actors. A village app has been tendered, locally discussed, programmed and handed over to the public. Furthermore, members of the social enterprise have founded an association “where we are trying to launch digitalisation projects, among other things, or let’s say smart solutions, in the region. […] And above all, these projects are usually not organised by us, but by people from the region” (D2_I01).

All in all, it is particularly interesting – and this is our answer to the question about the dynamics of innovation – that in most of the emergence phases of the initiatives studied, the core group of actors did not develop just one approach to address the problems. Rather, after the introduction of one approach to a solution, further approaches with specific measures were developed, like the many heads of a hydra. Of course, specific additional actors were also involved at a later stage. Thus, we observed that the first loop in the development of a digitally supported, socially innovative solution often led to a dynamic expansion of the approach in terms of content, which resulted in further loops, each with its own measures. It was not only closely related approaches that emerged, such as the creation of internet access, access to digital devices, the implementation of apps and the training of digital competence, but also thematically similar approaches such as the establishment of a village communication app for all villagers, on the one hand, and a village emergency app especially for elderly people living alone, on the other hand. A very creative and equally dynamic development of new approaches to solutions can be observed here.

The third phase of the innovation process, which we call the consolidation phase, is mainly about introducing the solutions and measures developed to potential users (and in some cases to the public), and about initiating a process of testing and improving the technical functions, evaluating the benefits for daily life, establishing proven measures and disseminating solutions. The digital tools are now being used in everyday rural life.

The village communities are sensitive to perceiving, collecting and analysing user experiences, feedback and concerns, and deriving ideas for improvement. They are keen to make the technical functions of the tool(s) more efficient and usable, to make their social function(s) more attractive and, consequently, to improve their dissemination capacity. At the same time, accompanying educational measures such as engaging “digital experts” in Weitlitz or providing digitalisation courses in Blaurow are now a stable element of the village communities. The village communities describe the measures as achievements that have been participatorily developed to improve their quality of life and, therefore, are characterised by a high level of acceptance.

It turned out that the consolidation phase has not come to a definitive end, but rather remains open to newer developments. We could see that ideas for further improvements or new digital tools, as well as newly opened windows of opportunity (especially funding opportunities) will be taken up. This could even lead back to the emergence phase and trigger new development loops: for example, in Blaurow for the e‑car or in Graupelow for the smart region initiative. Weitlitz also undertook a new loop: as one of 30 villages, it became part of a new district-wide digitalisation project in 2020 and now wants to tackle the topics of public Wi-Fi and digital village tours more intensively. In Schiebitz/Pfauenau the consolidation phase can also best be described as further testing and prototyping, as all digital tools used were developed for pilot testing.

What proved particularly interesting was that in Weitlitz, Schiebitz/Pfauenau and Graupelow the public relations work was quite professional with press releases, interviews and information documents and/or videos on their websites. All three cases were interested in gaining public attention for different reasons. One aim of both Weitlitz and Schiebitz/Pfauenau was to act as pilot regions for digital problem solving in rural areas, and to fulfil their pilot function they needed the publics’ attention. In contrast, the approach of the social entrepreneurs in Graupelow towards public attention was different. There, the co-living and co-working space needed public relations to attract new visitors. Therefore, public relations were very much involved from the beginning of the project. In the meantime, however, the public attention for the co-working space is so great throughout Germany and even internationally that the local administration, together with the cooperating social entrepreneurs, uses this prominence to give the smart region initiative better visibility. They organised “several press events […], the State Secretary for Digitalisation, at the time in the State Chancellery, was on site several times and also addressed the topic on several occasions” (D2_I02).

With regard to our research question about a possible spatial spread of digitally supported solutions in the context of innovation dynamics, the actors are evidently interested in publicising the novel solutions and, if possible, also in disseminating them. The goal is a spatial spread of the solutions. This phenomenon makes such initiatives attractive not only for rural community development per se, but also for larger-scale rural development.

However, it must also be said that the actors in the cases of Kürb-Ries and Blaurow did not intend to actively draw the attention of the general public to their novel approaches, assuming that their digitally based solutions would serve more local purposes. Nevertheless, they received public attention from the media and other administrative and political actors because of their activities. Kürb-Ries was one of the first villages that used the village talk app. The local actors had to learn that “the press, radio and television are interested in our village talk app here” (D4_I10) and “there were also many local mayors who approached me [the village head] about this app” (D4_I04). There was even greater media attention in Blaurow around the inauguration of the village e‑car, which is considered the first village car-sharing in the federal state of Brandenburg. It can, thus, be stated that even in cases where local actors did not pursue dissemination intentions regarding their solutions, there is nevertheless a great deal of attention paid to them by third parties (in media and politics). Often it is also third parties who describe these novel initiatives as “innovative”.