This paper reflects critically on challenges and opportunities associated with developing a theoretical framework for an interdisciplinary Framework Programme 6 research project funded by the European Commission in the area of digital ecosystems. The paper first provides a description of the interdisciplinary structure of the research agenda of the project and the areas of digital ecosystem research prioritised by each discipline. Second, it discusses the challenging questions of epistemology that arose in the context of theorising interdisciplinary research and provides a summary of how these were dealt with in order to outline a theoretical framework for digital ecosystems research by the end of the project. Finally, it discusses the lessons that can be extrapolated from the project experience, arguing that it is impossible to develop a unified interdisciplinary theoretical framework due to irreconcilable epistemological differences, yet it is possible and very worthwhile for those adhering to various disciplinary perspectives to collaborate towards the achievement of a practical joint endeavour. These lessons, which are considered valuable to the broader research community, are summarised in a model of the (im)possibility of interdisciplinarity.

This paper addresses the question whether complementary currencies can help us think and practice politics in new and different ways which contribute to democratic change and civic empowerment in our times. The space created by the Sardex complementary currency circuit in Sardinia (2009-to date) seems to leave enough room for the emergence of a collective micropolitical consciousness. At the same time, the design of a technological and financial infrastructure is also an alternative political, or “alter-political” choice. Both are alternative to hegemonic politics and to typical modes of mobilization and contestation. Thus, the Sardex circuit can best be understood as an alter-political combination of the bottom-up micropolitics of personal interactions within the circuit and of the politics of technology implicit in the top-down design of the technological and financial infrastructure underpinning the circuit. The Sardex experience suggests that a market that mediates the (local) real economy only and shuts out the financial economy can provide economic sustainability by supporting SMEs, supply a shield against the adverse effects of financial crises, and counteract the fetishization of money by disclosing daily its roots in social construction within a controlled environment of mutual responsibility, solidarity, and trust. We broached the Sardex currency and circuit in such terms in order to illustrate a significant and effective instance of alter-politics in our times and also to indicate, more specifically, community financial innovations which could be taken up and re-deployed to democratize or “commonify” local economies.

During financial crises, liquidity tends to become scarce, a problem that disproportionately affects small companies. This paper shows that obligation-clearing is a very effective liquidity-saving method for providing relief in the trade credit market and, therefore, on the supply-side or productive part of the economy. The paper also demonstrates that when used in conjunction with a complementary currency system such as mutual credit as a liquidity source the effectiveness of obligation-clearing can be doubled. Real data from the Sardex mutual credit system show a reduction of net internal debt of the obligation network of approximately 25% when obligation-clearing is used by itself and of 50% when it is used together with mutual credit. These instruments are also relevant from the point of view of risk mitigation for lenders, based in part on the information on individual companies that the mutual credit circuit manager can provide to banks (upon the circuit member’s request) and in part on the relief that liquidity-saving provides especially to NPL companies. The paper concludes by outlining recommendations for how even greater savings could be achieved by including the tax authority as another node in the obligation network.

Interaction computing is inspired by the observation that cell metabolic/regulatory systems construct order dynamically, through constrained interactions between their components and based on a wide range of possible inputs and environmental conditions. The goals of this work are to (i) identify and understand mathematically the natural subsystems and hierarchical relations in natural systems enabling this and (ii) use the resulting insights to define a new model of computation based on interactions that is useful for both biology and computation. The dynamical characteristics of the cellular pathways studied in systems biology relate, mathematically, to the computational characteristics of automata derived from them, and their internal symmetry structures to computational power. Finite discrete automata models of biological systems such as the lac operon, the Krebs cycle and p53–mdm2 genetic regulation constructed from systems biology models have canonically associated algebraic structures (their transformation semigroups). These contain permutation groups (local substructures exhibiting symmetry) that correspond to ‘pools of reversibility’. These natural subsystems are related to one another in a hierarchical manner by the notion of ‘ weak control ’. We present natural subsystems arising from several biological examples and their weak control hierarchies in detail. Finite simple non-Abelian groups are found in biological examples and can be harnessed to realize finitary universal computation . This allows ensembles of cells to achieve any desired finitary computational transformation, depending on external inputs, via suitably constrained interactions. Based on this, interaction machines that grow and change their structure recursively are introduced and applied, providing a natural model of computation driven by interactions.

‘Financial crisis’ is sometimes regarded as synonymous with ‘economic crisis’, but this is an oversimplification and risks missing the feedback loops between the financial and real economies. In this paper, the role of money is revisited in the context of distinguishing the real economy from the financial economy. A theoretical framework is developed to explain how endogenous (bank credit) and central bank exogenous (quantitative easing, QE) money creation feed into the real and financial economies. It looks at how the velocity of monetary circulation varies between the two economies and across asset types within the financial economy. Monetary transmission mechanisms are set into a framework that helps explain how QE stimulus risks combining asset price bubbles with poor growth in the real economy. The real economy transmission mechanism of ‘helicopter money’ is given context, enabling an assessment of the efficacy of both the QE and helicopter money policy routes. Finally, we present a new type of monetary transmission, ‘Smart Helicopter Money’, to deliver monetary stimulus to innovators, SMEs and high-growth firms via both complementary currencies and a modified form of QE in order to achieve proportionally greater impact on the real economy.

A methodology for the self-assessment of the socio-economic impact of Software-as-a-Service and Internet of Services research projects is presented in the context of EU-funded research. The SEQUOIA methodology was developed by assessing 30 existing projects in close collaboration with them. This process was documented to provide a basis for future research projects to apply the methodology on their own. The model and the empirical findings are discussed in detail, focussing on five projects that qualified as ‘best practices’. The main findings are that an ‘impact assessment culture’ needs to be cultivated, encouraged, and strengthened by the European Commission and all the stakeholders. The five projects that scored highest generated a fairly good financial return over the total projects’ output lifetime and showed a genuine attention for non-monetizable impacts such as knowledge creation and sharing, improvement in working routines, and social capital. Relative to the other projects, the five best practices demonstrated knowledge of the needs of their stakeholders and of their expectations, and engaged with them from the very beginning of their technology development activities. To integrate the assessment methodology within each project, its partners need to feel that they ‘own’ it, and that it has been optimized for its specific institutional, organizational, and epistemological requirements. We therefore recommend the inclusion in project consortia of socio-economic experts who are able to translate the ICT research language into measurable (potential) socio-economic impacts. SEQUOIA’s assumption that in the development of an effective socio-economic impact assessment methodology it is important to integrate the social and economic dimensions of potential impact was verified and validated through an ex post rationalization informed by economic anthropology, the usefulness of our quantitative model, and empirical evidence obtained through in-depth qualitative–quantitative data gathering techniques.