Social Innovation Trainings delivered for Made in Danube
3. Dec. 2018
Two Social Innovation training workshops were delivered by ZSI last week, respectively in Serbia and Croatia. The events were organised within the "Made in Danube" initiative and were run by Ms. Desiree Pecarz, project manager.
Social Innovation (SI), despite being all around us and evident through many forms, is still a relatively new and fuzzy notion for most of us. To widen knowledge about Social Innovation and help create a favorable cultural substrate, the two trainings managed to attract many local SMEs, researchers, policy makers as well as young students.
The training sessions started with definition of Social Innovation to answer following questions: What is SI? Where does SI happen? Who are the Social Innovators? How does SI occur? Secondly, the social innovation process was analysed per stages and examples were also put forward to understand when social innovation produces a systemic change and can be disruptive.
How to move on from worthy opportunities to serious pursuit was then illustrated. Both the business model canvas as well as the design thinking method were described to help innovators engage in a rigorous business planning. Because ‘The world is ruled by little else...’ as John Maynard Keynes said: everything starts with IDEAS that need to be innovative to solve a social challenge or meet a social need. But such promising ideas need also to be developed into attractive opportunities in order to generate change.
The training finally offered also pleasant activities to warm up the class and to prove how creativity and ability to think out of the box can be supported by appropriate tools such as like TRIZ, WISH, Brain 6 Thinking Hats, etc. Indeed "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking at which we created them" as A. Einstein said.
Another event is expected in December in Slovenia. Due to organisational issues, the date will be made available as soonest as possible! Stay tuned to learn more and come to our third event! Visit Made in Danube News page to keep updated!
For more information, you may also contact Desiree Pecarz directly (pecarz_at_zsi.at)
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Tags: social innovation