The main activities of the project have been divided in 3 phases:
Analysis: this part of the work has been conducted through surveys, interviews and partner meetings. The analytical phase was useful to define the boundaries of the needs and opportunities for developint open social innovation ecosystems and each partners regional specificities and needs. The Better Entrepreneurship Policy Tool (even though some problems arose in the use of the tool) has given to partners the analytical framework to define a shared self-assessment together with stakeholders.
Training and Testing: this has been the core part of the project. 4 online meetings let partners and invited stakeholder share some experiences and best practices in using tools and methods to establish and support open social innovation ecosystems. 4 topics have been explored:
- Social Economy Canvas
- Social Innovation Incubation
- Social Innovation Ecosystem
- Social Finance for Innovation
Toolbox Design: the experiences shared and gathered during the training and testing have been reviewd and analysed by partners in order to build an Impact Toolbox. The result has been included in the Design Option Paper with annexes to deepen some aspects and other interesting tool to further help other agencies in supporting the growth of open social innovation ecosystems.
The Design Option Paper is the handbook of the project and contains the outline of the four regional contexts involved, with a view to strengthening social innovation, despite their different approaches. The DOP can be a starting point for rethinking regional welfare policies, since it provides a guideline to regional policy makers. Moreover, the DOP promotes the visibility of social innovation and its potential in giving new and more innovative responses to emerging social needs. Beyond ImpAct Agencies project, the results of the DOP will be widespread through regional, national and European networks such as EURADA and EBN (European Business Innovation Network) with the objective of involving other development agencies in peer learning activities on social innovation.
The specific objectives of the document are:
- To analyse the different Regional contexts in terms of support for social innovation and delivering of innovation support to European Social Innovation Ecosystems.
- To explore new topics considered as priorities for the partners:
- Open social innovation ecosystem development with a particular focus on startups, innovation and co-design.
- Business support structure and access to the market: competitiveness of social enterprises.
- Research, innovation and technology: new technologies for improving the quality of life are fundamental aspects of Smart Specialisation Strategies.
- Education and training for social enterprise, skills empowerment and managerial training.
- Social value and social impact: identification of tools to measure social impact and creation of clusters to promote the social value chain.
The Design Option Paper is useful to:
- suggest to Regional governments new approaches that can be included in their innovation support programmes and services.
- disseminate the results of the project and involve other Regional Development Agencies in order to promote innovation and business support to social economy operators.
The paper will be circulated to participants to the survey, to the training and testing phase and to other interested stakeholders. Then it will be disseminated through each partner networks.
Two events out of the project duration have been yet confirmed to further disseminate and exploit project result:
- 25th March Eurada Brokerage event for innovation and development agencies
- 29th April European Social Economy Summit #RoadtoMannheim event series: Maximising partnerships for social impact (in collaboration with EBN and the LIAISE project funded by EaSI)
