Three effective messaging tools are presented this time for you to try and make communication within your teams faster, more interactive and effective. Less known than Slack or Trello, however not less effective and to some even more attractive – these are Chanty, Cisco Webex Teams and Fleep, which keep distant teams together, integrate and share.
Chanty is a business messenger, positioned as an alternative to Slack, one of the most known project management and communication tools. Similarly to its main competitor, Chanty integrates with common devices and let one to connect to multiple sources from one place. With this tool it possible to monitor activity from services like Google Drive, Twitter, Salesforce, Jira, Stripe and others, as well as receive notifications and structure the information.
For now beta version of Chanty is available for free, offering workflow and team collaboration features. It is possible to make collective decisions, create polls, transform discussions into workflows, store files and coordinate tasks by assigning team members.
Extremely useful features of the software are team audio and video calls, which can be made directly from the chat. Voice messages can also be sent with voice transcripts, providing with text version of the message and therefore allowing to increase the efficiency of communication. Chanty is able to save one’s time on predicting responses by offering relevant answers to choose from.
Moreover, the app has unlimited message history, which is searchable in case one misses the information. Filesharing supports documents, images, PDFs, spreadsheets and other file formats, using drag & drop function. The presence of emojis makes it more attractive, but “@mentions” allow to stress out significant information related to concrete persons and send them notifications. Through the settings notifications can be managed by each individual user.
Cisco Webex Teams is an app for continuous teamwork with group messaging, video meetings, file sharing and white boarding. It allows to share the content, multimedia, presentations and entire screen with remote attendees in real-time. Shared files can be easily found right alongside the conversation stored in a cloud. Instant messaging is easy to follow up in Cisco Webex Teams, as the messages can be responded right away of flagged for follow up later. Also, information security can be managed, allowing moderators to lock the spaces. Additional features integrate Webex with other popular digital tools, for instance, Box, Google Drive, Twitter, Trello, Zendesk etc.
Integrated with Arkadin audio conferencing, Webex Teams is an ultimate online solution for audio, web and video collaboration. Team members can join the meeting with one click, without waiting for hosts to start the meeting. Additionally Webex offers sets of devices, like Webex whiteboards or video systems for rooms and desktops, for those, who value the quality of meetings.
Depending on the number of people involved in a team work, Webex offers different price plans for groups of up to 8, 25 or 100 people. More info can be found on the website.
Fleep is a web-based messaging tool, created by former “Skypers” to fill in the gap between email and instant messaging applications. It integrates with email and allows receive emails within this app even from those, who are not registered in Fleep. The advantage of this app hides in an opportunity to communicate across organisations and regardless of team set up, so the user can be part of different teams. Even those, who are not user of fleep can participate.
Fleep also offers to store files in a cloud, share and use them from any device. Different to-do tasks can be created and managed within Fleep in order to keep people on track, as well as important messages can be pin to know where to find relevant message or what task to do. Admins functions are also available, as business communication needs to be managed. Fleep is not just another instant messaging app, as it is positioned as a viable alternative to email conversations. Fleep ID of a person looks like email address, however it is just email compatible.
By gathering and organizing dispersed knowledge about the SI process in SEs, this paper can help the social entrepreneurs, policy makers and supporting organisations of SEs to direct their attention to appropriate drivers that can enhance the SE’s ability to innovate socially. The study examines how SI can be encouraged and managed effectively in the SE. By investigating the drivers of SI in the context of SE, the authors structure knowledge into three main factors and a four-stage process.
The main contribution of the article was to improve understanding of how SI is created in the context of SEs, as only 17% of the reviewed articles have any mention of the SI process.
Additionally, conclusion is made. SI happens within a system of SI (community, institutions and government) in which SE plays a fundamental role initiating the process, articulating the various actors involved, and balancing social value generation and financial sustainability.
To this end, it uses participatory management tools, organizational learning, partnership networks, adaptation of SI to the local context, and support from community and the government.
The full article is available HERE or as a download below.
To cite this article: de Souza João-Roland, I., & Granados, M. L. (2020). Social innovation drivers in social enterprises: Systematic review. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 27(5), 775-795. To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1108/JSBED-12-2019-0396
This publication has been prepared within SENBS project No. 2020- 1-EE01-KA204-077999. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.
Join us for an engaging webinar exploring how technology and artificial intelligence can drive social innovation and create positive societal impacts
What to Expect:
Part 1: AI & Social Impact
– Organizational Implementation: Get a glimpse of AI for good strategies, explore impactful AI projects, and access resources tailored for non-profits and social enterprises.
– Co-Creation and Collaboration: Discover the role of co-creation in integrating AI into organizations and society.
Discussion: What problems in your organization or your community can you solve with AI?
Part 2: Tech & AI Impact Ecosystems
– Compare traditional and emerging tech ecosystems in the EU.
– Examine Europe’s strategic role in tech-driven social innovation.
– Explore opportunities for collaboration in the EU tech ecosystem.
Discussion: What part of the European AI Ecosystem could you play?
Why Attend?
Gain insights, practical knowledge, and inspiration to engage in tech and AI initiatives for societal benefit.
Together, we can foster a collaborative and innovative ecosystem in Europe.
Our speakers:
Tobias Oertel, Adviser AI & Digitisation, zukunft zwei Innovationsagentur; Berlin.
Marc Sunarjo, Expert Social Innovation & Social Entrepreneurship, zukunft zwei Innovationsagentur, Berlin.
we just came across an interesting article on Fast Company about a new type of social entrepreneurs that would like to share with you.
What if we tried to prevent future problems, instead of just solving the ones in front of us? This is the question asked.
Pick any social enterprise, and it’s almost always a reaction to the past. After a natural disaster or a new refugee crisis, designers build new shelters and experiment with new aid delivery systems. After the public school system had already failed children, social entrepreneurs started building new educational tools. A new book argues that social entrepreneurs need to spend more time thinking about the problems of the future—and less time stuck on “post-traumatic innovation.”
“What if social enterprise was also responsible for preemption?” writes designer Matt Manos in the manifesto at the center of the book, Toward a Preemptive Social Enterprise. “What if social entrepreneurs were also futurists?”
As a designer, Manos pioneered a unique pro bono model with his firm, Verynice. Half of the time, he works for standard paying clients. The other half of the time, his firm donates its work to the social sector. That split led him to start clearly seeing differences between traditional business and social enterprise.
“At times, what’s super obvious in the private sector has just never been mentioned in the social sector, and vice versa,” he says. “When you think about startup clients, a lot of the themes in this book are incredibly obvious to them—that it’s important to invest in future trends, to be thinking about strategic foresight. But when you look at social enterprise, it was launched in reaction or response to something that happened in the past.”
While large businesses like Google or Facebook or Autodesk pour money into R&D—and Elon Musk releases decade-long master plans—nonprofits and social enterprises rarely do the same thing. There are a few exceptions. Some new startup incubators are now focused on social issues, and programs like Singularity University’s accelerator attempt to look comprehensively at future issues. Anything trying to tackle climate change or resilience is, by necessity, focused partly on how the challenge will get worse later.
But the sector is generally more reactionary than preemptive, and that means we’re missing opportunities to get ahead of certain problems. In the simplest scenario, that might mean better preparing for likely natural disasters before they happen. But it also means considering problems that we haven’t yet faced.
“Artificial intelligence, to me, is just a mind-blowing gold mine of stuff that social entrepreneurs and nonprofits are rarely tackling,” says Manos. He gives the example of what may happen when more jobs are lost to automation—not just the issue of income, but how lives will change. “When jobs are automated, people will have more time on their hands. They’ll have more issues with drug abuse. They’ll have issues of self-worth and value, and that might lead to mental illness or suicide . . . that’s just one of many emerging issues.”
Even as social enterprises look at problems that are probably going to exist decades from now, Manos thinks there’s an opportunity to do a better job of considering future scenarios. “What is the future we’re trying to create by doing this work with the homeless today?” he says. “What does that actually mean, or what kind of future could that actually create?”
The book suggests that organizations should imagine ideal futures, and work backward from that ideal. That approach is also a way to deal with the fact that we can’t predict how the world will change. “We have entered a time in which we lack the capability to foresee what technological advancements and capabilities will take place in the next four years,” Manos writes. “So how do we, as designers, understand the future of markets, and the future of business design? We make it up.”
The book, a short collection of essays and tools, is an attempt to help social entrepreneurs start thinking as futurists. Manos’s small design firm also now has a futures wing to help clients do the same thing. “We’re constantly helping people launch new services and products, and there’s kind of this question of what it’s all for,” he says. “For me, the future is a great cause to invest in.”
The book is available for digital download on a pay-what-you-want basis; for $25, readers also get a printed edition.
Have something to say about this article? You can email us and let us know. If it’s interesting and thoughtful, we may publish your response.
This is the fourth and final episode of the miniseries Finance4Good. In this episode we introduce the ideas of green and social washing from the perspective of investors, and how the EU try to tackle the issue through an EU Taxonomy and through global investment movements such as ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing. The episode begins by introducing these concepts then in the first half of the episode we meet Léo Miranda, Marketing Director at La Nef, a French Ethical Bank who shares La Nef´s main priorities, and values and describes examples of how they ensure projects that they invest in are truly sustainable.
At 18 minutes 50 seconds. The second half of the episode explores the opinions of previous guests from the miniseries Donal Traynor of Community Finance Ireland, Piet Callens of Hefboom and Peru Sasia, President of FEBEA. They tell us what Green and Social washing mean to them, and how we can overcome these phenomena.
This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.
The European Social Entrepreneur -ESE project coordinated by CO-LABORY
During its implementation, project’s participants produced a high-quality materials and provided the best possible education for trainers, staff of participating organizations, and young people in disadvantaged situations.
ESE – Operational course for social innovation
As the project results an online platform was developed containing training material on SE, the role of the social entrepreneur, how the funds are obtained, and which concrete tools can be used to launch a social enterprise.
“Operational course for Social Innovation” is a course aiming at the inclusion of diasadvantaged groups in society by acquiring skills and tools that wil assist them and make them valuable members, will gain more ingormation on social entrepreurship and will be able to create their own businesses. These results will be achieved through the developed materials of the course. Each module contains a theoretical and methodological part, to check and ensure the acquisition of knowledge on learners in a more practical way.
The project website also was developed with newsletters, videos, articles, information material, and the Manual on Social Entrepreneurship. Also projects results included the following:
The live Facebook “An opportunity towards (y) our future” to raise public awareness through the use of social media, on social entrepreneurship issues by answering questions and curiosities of the participants.
The virtual tour on social entrepreneurship that consists of video interviews with representatives of successful social enterprises in each partner country of the project.
Enrol now and start learning more on Social innovation: online platform
Below a brief summary of the e-course content:
Module 1 – “WHAT IS SOCIAL ENTERPRENEURSHIP” is an introduction on the basic concept of social entrepreneurship that will be followed by an interactive workshop for better understanding of the term.
Module 2 -“WHERE TO FIND FUNDINGS FOR A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE” focuses on the financial aspect of a social business, and provides information on all the funding opportunities assisting learners in their path of creating their own business.
Module 3 -“LAUNCH A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE PLAN” launches the idea of a business plan, points out the significance of a business plan and provides useful guidance on how to prepare one. This effort is strengthened with a practical workshoip for personal reflection.
Module 4 – “BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS”- In addition to the business plan in this section another useful tool is explained, business model canvas.
Module 5 – “WHO IS THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR”. In this module more information ad tools are shared for better understanding of the term social entrepreneur.
Module 6 – “IMPACT OF SOCIAL ENTERPRISES”-In this module the impact of social entreprises is measured by studying succesful examples of sustainable social enterprises.
All the above modules are focusing on essential topics that will enhance learners’ skills and prepare them better for the business world achieving social inclusion and personal growth
Learn more on project development via the following link:https://socialentrepreneur.eu/
This week, the Information System Authority (RIA) launched a new cybersecurity campaign, ‘Be especially IT-conscious during the emergency situation’, which warns people about cyber threats related to teleworking. All tips for safe distance learning and working at a home office are gathered on the website www.itvaatlik.ee.
‘Due to the current emergency situation and the measures necessary to prevent the coronavirus, a large part of the Estonian population has switched to teleworking and distance learning, using a wide range of technical tools and platforms. This has created favourable conditions for cybercriminals to take advantage of insecure communication platforms chosen due to haste, careless data sharing, and the lack of face-to-face communication. That is why we launched a campaign which helps to reduce the risks of working from home under the ‘IT-vaatlik’ brand, which has been well-known already since autumn,’ said Margus Noormaa, Director General of the Information System Authority.
The information is intended for people who, in one way or another, come into contact with teleworking and distance learning. ‘Ole IT-vaatlik’ reminds computer users to check who they are emailing, update the software on the devices they use for teleworking, avoid suspicious attachments and links, and take care of their personal information.
Simple advice in Estonian and Russian for safe teleworking during the emergency situation can be found on the website www.itvaatlik.ee
The government supported the proposal to allocate additional funds from the reserve allocated for coping with the coronavirus crisis to RIA’s cyber threat prevention campaign ‘Ole IT-vaatlik’.
Additionally, conclusion is made. SI happens within a system of SI (community, institutions and government) in which SE plays a fundamental role initiating the process, articulating the various actors involved, and balancing social value generation and financial sustainability.
