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Keys to generating impact and social innovation 

More and more profitable and innovative business models with high social value are springing up around us and changing the world. Their success lies in their capacity to address social problems such as poverty, social inequalities, unemployment and climate change. The last EADA Executive Meeting 2016, held on May 27th in the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya, was dedicated to all the people who are behind such projects. This is the big venue for EADA Alumni and was attended by over 500 people, most of them managers.

This edition’s challenge was to present the keys to bringing about change and carry out projects with a substantial social impact. To this end, the presentations were structured under four main headings, coinciding with the four agents of change: people, teams, companies and society. And it was made clear at the Executive Meeting that change and social impact is everyone’s responsibility, both individually and collectively. 

People

What can I do to change social reality? This is the question that was addressed by the presentation ‘Tomorrow doesn’t exist’ by PhD. Rubén Llop, professor in EADA’s Strategy and People Management Department. “We can all change the world in some way but to do so we must first imagine a better future and engage all our emotional and intellectual capacities so that this happens” he insisted. And in allusion to the title of his presentation he added: “If your head and your heart inspire you to do something do not wait until tomorrow, do it today, or at least try”.

He pointed out however that “all too often when we imagine a better future we apply what we already know, which is a mistake and has nothing to do with social innovation”. In order to avoid this Llop recommended that we “see things with new eyes, in other words, ask ourselves, what’s the matter with that person who is socially excluded or that unmotivated person in my team? And then look for a solution”. 

On the other hand, when talking about people we cannot avoid mentioning Specialisterne, a company that offers a wide range of consultancy services to organisations around the world –especially to do with IT systems and data and document treatment- whose mission is to help create job posts for people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). According to Francesc Sistach, its General Manager in Spain and Latin America “we take advantage of these people’s perseverance, constancy and their passion for detail and turn these into a competitive advantage and a means for helping them to find employment in the IT sector”. They are “people with different capabilities, more motivated than the general population, but in the past at Specialisterne they didn’t have job opportunities”.

Teams

“Multidisciplinary and multicultural teams are the ones that generate disruptive ideas that change the world” according to Xavier Verdaguer, a Catalan entrepreneur who has lived in San Francisco for many years, who in 2001 founded the Imagine Creativity Centre, a centre that identifies social needs and seeks out concrete solutions through cutting edge innovation and teams of different ages and backgrounds. Mr Verdaguer proceeded to explain this: “We go to companies or bodies who are keen to launch projects with an impact. At the same time, we look for entrepreneurs who are capable of taking on risks and who want to change the world. What we do in Imagine is bring these two together: Companies that find it hard to come up with disruptive ideas and young entrepreneurs with many ideas with an impact but without the resources to turn them into real projects”.

The latest edition held by Imagine Creativity was the Imagine mSocial 2016, and its finalist projects were presented at the EADA Executive Meeting. This was a social innovation programme that was implemented in Barcelona and the objective of which was to come up with digital solutions to four social challenges in Catalonia: improving blind people’s autonomy, improving home care for elderly people with disabilities, promoting urban renewal in underprivileged neighbourhoods and, finally, making the attention that public social services provide to citizens more efficient. 

Companies

Organisations are also responsible for creating value through social action. According to the Spanish Network of the United Nations Global Compact, companies have a real commitment to respect human rights, to comply with labour regulations, to preserve the environment and fight against corruption. Hence the mass layoffs due to the economic crisis were in no way a sustainable measure by companies. 

That’s what José María Torres, president of Numintec, thinks, who argued in favour of “governments giving people whose businesses have failed a second business chance”. In his opinion “This is a phenomenon throughout Europe where 1 million companies close down every year, totally the opposite of what is happening in the United States where a regulation exists which gives them a second chance and that, for example, has enabled Apple and Ford to exist”. According to Mr Torres, “everyone has the right to enter again into the production process”.

Furthermore, IBM showed us how CSR initiatives can be integrated in all areas of the company. Enric Delgado, head of cloud computing strategies for IBM in southern Europe explained how they engage their technology and expertise to solve social problems and help other socially responsible organisations. “For example, we collaborate with various NGO’s or set up our IT systems in schools with few resources or in hospitals that need to improve their efficiency” he pointed out. He went on and expressed this in a metaphor: “We sow the seed, people water it and something new begins to grow”.

Society

Social impact, transformation, change... all these terms that were brought up on various occasions during the day forum lead to more social wellbeing, to more equality of opportunities for everyone and to sustainable environmentally friendly measures. One example that perfectly illustrates this idea is a project that was carried out in an indigenous town in Chiapas by the State Treasury of the Mexican Government with collaboration from EADA, Harvard University, the InterAmerican Development Bank and the NGO Potenciar Comunidades.

According to PhD. Elisabet Garriga, director of the EADA Corporate Sustainability Impact Centre, “together with the inhabitants of the territory we designed viable business models with future prospects which at the same time would improve the local inhabitants’ living conditions”. As a result, improvements were made in the public transport system, access to knowledge was facilitated by setting up a wi-fi network, which gave a boost to the region both socially and economically, creating a domino effect in the surrounding towns. 

Another very illustrative example is the Escola Sant Gervasi de Barcelona. This is a teacher’s cooperative set up in 1970 which implements a pedagogical model based on furthering the student’s personal and professional growth through classes with a practical focus, with many extra-school activities included on the syllabus- which parents can also take part in- with a broad component of scientific and technological knowledge whereby students receive classes from scientific experts and are fluent in foreign languages. According to the centre’s executive president David Cos “we are more than a school because we promote individual competencies and conceive education as an evolving process related to a person’s growth”. 

Here you can see the photos taken at the EADA Executive Meeting