“Wien ist anders”
When you visit Vienna, you may see the slogan of the municipality — Wien ist anders (Vienna is different)— in many places, including the sideline of the Highway which separates Vienna from other states. This may look a bit odd at the first glance given that every city is, indeed, different from others.
But it may not take long to recognize that not only Vienna, but also Austria is really a different place with a number of distinctive features in terms of architecture, history, and nature.
This time I am at the International Institute for Applied System Analysis in Austria to investigate Austrian crowdfunding platforms. My short time scientific mission reminded me one more time of the fact that “Wien ist anders” when I dig deeper into the Austrian crowdfunding platforms.
EU’s Cost Action “Multi-Disciplinary Innovation for Social Change” (https://socialchangelab.eu/) provided me funding to carry out this research. The main of the respective Cost Action, SHIINE, is “to demonstrate, through the adoption of Multi-Disciplinary Innovation (MDI) methods, how we can respond to social problems with a design-led approach which has a problem-oriented ethos, supporting positive social change and the development of international public policy discourse”.
There are currently over 10 crowdfunding platforms in the form of reward-, donation or loan-based crowdfunding which are, as the SHIINE’s mission reflects “responding social problems with a design-led approach” and “supporting positive social change”.
In contrast to other countries, there are a number of crowdfunding platforms in Austria that solely focus on some specific sectors. That is one of the factors driving success in Austrian crowdfunding platforms.
For instance, ibelieveinyou (www.ibelieveinyou.at)is dedicated to amateur or professional athletes, sports clubs, or sport events where they raise money in exchange for some rewards including greeting cards, private training, or small gifts. So far, more than 450 campaigns have been successfully funded through Ibelieveinyou.
When it comes to global warming and the transition to clean energy, there are also a couple of platforms that promote renewable energy, energy efficiency, or mobility projects. Collective Energy, among other platforms, attracted my interest since it enables average citizens to be part of the so-called “energy transition”. My visit to the Collective Energy’s office in Vienna and meeting with the founder, Christopher, also allowed me to raise questions I had in my mind about their exciting story, the motivation of the supporters, etc. I have covered in my book about “Power of Crowd” in detail how the Collective Energy platform brings together various stakeholders for the same purpose- renewable energy transition- in an innovative way which seems to be beneficial both for the campaign owners(mostly farmers), Austrian citizens and the environment.
1000x1000.at, respect.at, greenrocket.at, https://www.crowdfunding.at/ is some of the crowdfunding platforms in Austria which are getting not only attention but also financial support from the Austrian citizen.
As an example of sharing economy, Austrian crowdfunding platforms seem to work successfully in different forms.
Among others, social capital was one of the areas I have covered in my research in Austria. My own observation, meeting with the people involved in the crowdfunding sector coupled with the World Value Survey’s respective survey result suggest that social capital in the form of trust among the people is quite high in the country. I will be also digging deeper into the issue of social capital as a catalyzer of the success in my incoming book.
I would thank again SHIINE action (https://socialchangelab.eu/) for providing me Short Time Scientific Misson grant to carry out this research.
Stay tuned!
