CHESS: Change Hubs for Ecosystemic Social Solutions

The rationale for this project is based on three main challenges: 1) Social innovation lacks access to finance, scaling models, and qualified personnel and is therefore not sufficiently applied. 2) Social innovators act in silos and are not sufficiently integrated into the wider innovation ecosystems. 3) Social innovation toolkits are plentiful, but there is a lack of insight about the tools’ effectiveness and pertinence.

CHESS-Change Hubs for Ecosystemic Social Solutions addresses these three main challenges by designing, implementing and testing an "Action Manual for Social Innovation" in four specific local contexts with their own specific challenges:  Slovenia (sustainable blue economy), Italy (youth and female unemployment), Lithuania (refugee integration) and Greece (climate change).

CHESS´ partners recognise that complex societal challenges can only effectively be addressed by social innovators if they are connected with other actors from the wider innovation ecosystem. CHESS will contribute to providing a wider European scale for innovative ecosystems based on experimentation, in particular by testing and engaging with local ecosystems in national and regional pilot areas and by bringing to light new cooperation opportunities.

To achieve this ambition, six objectives are of central importance: (1) Develop a conceptual framework for social innovation ecosystems that integrates theory and practice, based on dialogue and knowledge transfer; (2) Define the relevant stakeholders to involve in the innovation ecosystem in the different contexts; (3) Test the conceptual framework through local pilots in 4 different countries; (4) Develop the SI in Action Manual based on learning from local pilots; (5) Communicate results widely, beyond the social innovation community; (6) Ensure the interlinking and connection of SI actors with broader innovation ecosystems

The outcomes contribute to an improvement of social innovation concepts and practice models addressing specific societal challenges, as well as to an interconnection of social innovation actors and a strengthening of innovation ecosystems at the European but also at the national and local level in the four countries (Slovenia, Greece, Italy and Lithuania).

• Euro-Mediterranean University (EMUNI) – Slovenia (Coordinator)
• Project Ahead SC (PJA) – Italy
• Europos Socialinio Fondo Agentura (ESFA) – Lithuania
• Ethniko Kentro Erevnas Kai Technologikis Anaptyxis (CERTH) – Greece
• TU Dortmund University (TUDO) – Germany
• International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) – UK
• The Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) – UK

The main goals of the CHESS project are:

• Integrate social innovation conceptual and practice models to address concrete and locally palpable societal challenges
• Ensure the interlinking and connection of SI actors with broader innovation ecosystems at local and European levels
• Test and further develop existing innovation approaches and toolkits, focusing on lessons learned in tackling local societal challenges and achieving financial sustainability

This project is rooted in practice and driven by a learning by doing approach. We will work on four carefully selected societal challenges, each systemic in nature, in four countries (Slovenia, Italy, Lithuania, and Greece). Each country has an ‘Action partner’ (ESFA, PJA, EMUNI, CERTH) who has identified a specific issue relevant to their country. They will test different tools to bring together social innovators and diverse stakeholders including SMEs and startups, accelerators and business incubators, industry, investors, philanthropy and the public sector to collaboratively work on the challenge.

‘Learning partners’ have extensive social innovation expertise (TUDO, ISPIM, SIX) and will reflect the experiences of these four interventions in a manual, including different resources (from financial to networking and methodological). Subsequently, they will observe how these are being applied, then improve the manual for the Action partners to test them again in their country. After three cycles of testing, iterating and improving, the tools will be collected in the final version of the Social Innovation in Action manual that can be shared and used by organisations across innovation ecosystems who want to embed a quadruple helix approach to tackling their most complex social challenges.