Learn – Page 12 – Social Enterprise Development in the Baltic Sea Region

Social Innovation Trends 2020-2030

The beginning of 21st century has marked the significance of Social Innovation development for tackling social, political, economic and environmental challenges. The next decade, according to Frost and Sullivan

(The Whitepaper Social Innovation to answer Societal Challenges., 2014), will be characterized by ‘the need to harmonize multiple types of innovation to address complex and interlinked global societal challenges’ and in this sense, the notion of ‘convergence’ regarding social innovation becomes crucial.

The report ‘SOCIAL INNOVATION TRENDS 2020-2030. THE NEXT DECADE OF SOCIAL INNOVATION’, prepared by Social Innovation Academy, analyses the bunch of research papers and initiatives of European and global actors, that has shaped the state-of-art and are considered as transformation drivers towards more innovative, effective, creative and collaborative societies. A number of publications on social innovation and the website materials provided by the European social innovators were used in analysis to identify the core trends.

The authors identify the pressing issue of the ageing population and offer to rethink how to improve social systems around the globe and make them more inclusive and equalitarian, in accordance with 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The key focus is not centered on how to encourage more innovation in more places, but rather which kinds of innovation should be encouraged while at the same time discouraging harmful innovation. The future of social innovation will definitely be focused on the issues of:

Urbanization, enhance the development of innovative labs and spaces for experimentation;
Migration, encouraging the design of efficient cultural and social integration;
Education, facilitating social innovation participatory learning among experts in education, practitioners, researchers and policy-makers;
Climate change, combatting negative effect of fossil fuels and plastic pollution;
Technological development, exploring the ways to strengthen open and collaborative societies;
Circular economy, looking for new ways to minimize the pressure on ecosystems;
Future of work, exploring new needs and abilities of societies to adapt to them;
Social Impact, fostering the social value and facilitating new ways of impact measurement;
Democracy, improving institutional trust, civic participation and inclusion;
Gender, working on awareness-raising, coalition building and advocacy for poverty reduction and human development;
Health, looking for efficient ways to tackle global pandemics and other challenges.

Download ‘SOCIAL INNOVATION TRENDS 2020-2030. THE NEXT DECADE OF SOCIAL INNOVATION’ and explore more!

More references to social innovation trends:

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.

Learn | Support for SocEnts | Youth

Tøyen Unlimited

Tøyen Unlimited is a neighborhood incubator that supports local enthusiasts with innovative ideas, in solving local social challenges, through the establishment and continued operation of revenue generating companies with ideal form and social purpose. TU is thus an investment in location-based social entrepreneurship.

Tøyen Unlimited’s point of departure is that solutions to the challenges in a neighborhood just exist among the inhabitants of the local community in question. The incubator was initiated as part of the area lift Tøyen and has since become an independent organization with a residence in Aktivitetshuset K1 on Tøyen, Oslo (Norway).

Neighborhood incubator

A neighborhood incubator is both a physical workplace, a knowledge center, and a learning community where residents with a desire to create a better (local) community gain access to resources, networks, and a collective of other change creators. It is an arena for idea development where the first building blocks of their social enterprise are laid.

Unlimiters

Unlimiters are social entrepreneurs who receive support in the form of a Try It, Do It, or Build It package that follows the journey to social entrepreneurship from idea, to pilot project, and on to scaling. The packages include a local place to work with other Unlimited, public and private sector networks, personal follow-up and mentoring, and financial support.

https://www.toyenunlimited.no/

Corporate Impact Analysis Tool by UNEP FI

Picture taken from Corporate Impact Measurement tool

Initially Corporate Impact Analysis Tool was developed for banks and investors to gain a cross-cutting view of the impact status and possibilities of their clients and investee companies. Based on the Positive Impact Initiative’s unique approach, it provides a holistic analysis of companies’ impacts across different sectors and countries.

The tool may be used by corporates themselves as a contribution to strategic planning and business development. The tool is intended to help organisations manage their portfolios, set and meet impact targets, and ultimately become more effective at managing impact-related risks and opportunities in close collaboration with their clients and investee companies. It allows to monitor the progress towards the targets of creating positive impact and reducing any harmful consequences as a result of the business activities.

To complete the assessment, collection of significant amounts of data from both internal and external sources should be done. The Stories For Impact team has developed comprehensive Manual explaining on how to use the data in a proposed tool. It guides through the investigation and learning process, that allows organisations to answer 3 significant questions for impact measurement: “Where?” (Identification), “What?” (Assessment) and “How?” (Monitoring).

The first part of the analysis stands for identification of significant impact areas based on company typology, geography and sectors of activity. After entry of the related data, the tool will tell which geographical and impact areas (according to SDGs) the company influences the most, taking into consideration countries of activity, their income level, generated assets, unemployment rates, other social and environmental challenges (based on rankings and statistics), impact areas associations etc.

The second part assesses the company’s impact performance and impact management capabilities, demonstrating the company’s actual impacts in defined impact areas. The precise metrics need to be chosen by yourself, for instance, with the support of the IRIS catalog of metrics. The methodology and applied classifications are based on The Impact Radar (2018) analysis tool.

Based on entered data, Corporate Impact Analysis Tool demonstrates the status of the company according to the worked-out criteria: “PI” (Positive impact), “PI transition” or “Not PI”. The criteria for receiving “PI” status are the following:

No activities in any exclusion list sectors;
>50% of revenue generated in low-income countries;
good impact performance;
good impact management capabilities;
>50% of revenue generated in sectors that fall under a recognized taxonomy (e.g. EU taxonomy).

All relations between the social and environmental challenges and the impact company has on their improvement are visualized in Excel spreadsheets, making the analysis as simple and comprehensive as possible.

The Corporate Impact Analysis Tool is open source and freely available – for direct use or for adaptation and integration into proprietary systems.

The Manual: https://storiesforimpact.com/user-manual-of-the-new-corporate-impact-analysis-tool-by-unep-fi/

More about the tool: https://www.unepfi.org/publications/positive-impact-publications/corporate-impact-tool/

Learn | Library | Successful Business Models | Youth

Social Enterprise as a Mechanism of Youth Empowerment

Liang Shang from the City University of Hong Kong and Yanto Chandra from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University have developed explicit research on the youth empowerment mechanisms applied in Social Entrepreneurship as a practice-based learning activity implemented in the Hong Kong University. The research poses a research question “How do social enterprises empower its beneficiaries?” and focuses on Soap Cycling, social enterprise founded in 2012 by David Bishop, a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. It started as an internship project run by University of Hong Kong’s undergraduate students. Now the project is run also in Mainland China, Singapore, Myanmar, Canary Islands, Philippines and India.

Youth empowerment is one of the key missions of Soap Cycling. Soap Cycling is a SE because it seeks to create educational and environmental value while generating revenue from various sources (i.e., donation, fees, etc.) to run its programs. This SE recycles unused soaps to improve sanitation and hygiene of young people in underdeveloped regions. By recycling unused soaps into new soaps, this SE seeks to address pneumonia and diarrhea, two leading killers of the children around the world (International Vaccine Access Center, 2015). These diseases can be prevented with appropriate hand washing with soap and hygiene education (World Health Organization, 2013).

Soap Cycling SE is operated by student volunteers, who are distributed across various managerial positions and operational aspects. These volunteers normally work for 13 weeks (during a semester) as a part of their undergraduate curriculum. With three other co-directors: Baniel Chung (an engineer and marketing expert), Beau Lefler and Dr. Chad Lykins (both lecturers in law at the University of Hong Kong), Bishop provides guidance and advice to students in managing the SE and encourages the volunteers to make decisions and take own actions (Chiu, 2012). Specifically, how does Soap Cycling SE empower students?

The research identified two important elements of youth empowerment in SE not previously discussed in the SE literature, which are: social-capital empowerment and entrepreneurial-capital empowerment. Specifically, social-capital empowerment consists of three sub-elements, which are (1) building social awareness, (2) creating meaningful participation, and (3) developing social connections. The other two elements identified as part of entrepreneurial-capacity empowerment and being central to youth empowerment SE, are: (4) power-sharing between youths and adults, and (5) building entrepreneurial skills.

Social capacity building

Soap Cycling SE empowered student volunteers’ social capacity through three main stages: social awareness building, meaningful participation and enhancing social connections. The social awareness building involves naming the problem, speaking out, raising consciousness, and researching. Before the student volunteers joined Soap Cycling SE activities, many of them lacked awareness of the hygiene problems in developing countries and had no idea what happened to unused soaps in hotels after they were used and how they might be repurposed. The SE develops young people’s social awareness or individuals’ understanding of the needs and historical specificity of social events and process (Dinev & Hart, 2005).

Meaningful Participation

Soap Cycling SE provides volunteering opportunities to university students by engaging them directly in charity work to “learn and help the less fortunate people in the underdeveloped countries”

Social Connections

Soap Cycling SE also provided student volunteers the opportunities to enhance their social connections through social and teamwork development skills. Through cooperation with others, the student volunteers met new people, developed networking, teamwork, communication and interpersonal skills.

Entrepreneurial-Capacity Empowerment

The SE was established to provide a platform for students to develop hands-on entrepreneurial and technical (e.g., IT, law, marketing) experience and better prepare them for future jobs. Research identified two elements of entrepreneurial-capacity empowerment: power-sharing between youth and adults and building entrepreneurial skills.

Power-sharing between youth and adults

Most youth internship programs do not offer students the opportunities to make real decisions, nor to suffer the consequences when they make mistakes. Taking responsibility for own decisions is a critical element in youth empowerment as constructive learning can arise from bearing consequences from one’s own actions.

Soap Cycling is operated by student volunteers and the volunteers are given various managerial positions to handle all administrative and operational aspects of the SE as a part of their 13-week internship. The SE has empowered students to exercise their decision-making power. This enhanced the students’ self-confidence and developed their sense of responsibility, as SE enables power-sharing between youths and adults to work effectively and to suffer from the consequences of their mistakes.

Building entrepreneurial skills

As part of 13-week work, volunteers have to submit an action plan to improve the SE and a general manager evaluates their performance. The volunteers work in various departments, from “strategy” (in charge of developing growth and expansion strategy), marketing (in charge of formulating marketing and branding strategies), manufacturing and delivery, to accounting, human resources, and law. The first-hand entrepreneurial experience helped develop students’ leadership, communication, creative thinking and interpersonal skills and other management skills.

As stated by David Bishop, founder of Soap Cycling, university graduates often lack real-world experience and face difficulties in finding jobs after graduation. He wanted to change this situation and provided the students with a meaningful leadership and management experience.