POSITIVE · Participatory Open Social Innovation Through Interlinking Valuable Ecosystems

Social innovation actors take on an important role in finding solutions for societal challenges. However, many social enterprises lack entrepreneurial skills and digitization of their products or services and there is still a lack of support for social entrepreneurs, which is due to the fact that many business support organisations have little understanding of the specific challenges and needs of social entrepreneurs. The social innovation and the technology innovation ecosystems are currently not well interconnected and mostly considered separate ecosystems with different skillsets. The POSITIVE project will counteract these factors by raising awareness about the benefits of social innovation and providing capacity building about social innovation and social entrepreneurship to the tech innovation ecosystem, thus creating the basis for better support for social entrepreneurs and a more inclusive innovation ecosystem based on mutual understanding. The project will also provide new opportunities for social entrepreneurs to digitise their products and services and to acquire new business skills through the organisation of an Open Innovation Challenge in three countries (POSITIVE Impact Challenge), which constitutes knowledge transfer from the tech into the social innovation ecosystem, with the specific purpose to support regional SI actors to access alternative means of financing. The POSITIVE project will also foster the interlinkage of the two ecosystems on a regional and European level through cross-fertilization, knowledge exchange and policy recommendations on how the POSITIVE Impact Challenge model can be replicated. Thus, the POSITIVE project can not only contribute to the strengthening of the social economy on different levels, but also make the tech innovation ecosystem more resilient and equipped to tackle the important societal challenges by including social innovation actors.