About benisi
Building a European Network of Incubators for Social Innovation
The BENISI partners seek to build a Europe-wide network of networks of incubators for social innovation. This network will proactively identify at least 300 social innovations that are identified with high potential for scaling successfully, and ensure the delivery of necessary support services to those social innovations. Networks are already structured in a collaborative mode; they are more able to spread knowledge and practice horizontally and they are the perfect ally when trying to develop a Europe-wide programme that needs to balance local action with continent-wide strategy and vision.
Project summary
Scaling Social Innovation
A social innovation can be defined as a new idea, product, service or model that simultaneously meets social needs and creates new social relationships or collaborations. Social innovations are not only important for the new specific solutions to societal needs, but they can furthermore impact on society's capacity to innovate. BENISI is a trans-European consortium that aims at identifying and highlighting 300 of the most promising, impacting and employment-generating of these social innovations that are often only developed locally – in the public, private, third, social enterprise and cooperative sectors. They are therefore yet to be scaled either significantly within their originating country or internationally. BENISI has established a wide network of competent partners throughout Europe, in order to provide the tools and create the conditions for the social innovations to be transferred and adopted in other European localities. This will expand their reach and impact, and simultaneously generate positive cascading effects across Europe on many key social and environmental challenges the European Union is facing today. Most importantly, BENISI expects the transfer and scaling of many innovative social enterprises to address one of Europe’s most pressing needs: to enhance economic growth and create new and meaningful jobs for a new generation of young people, who are in need of employment.
Partners
Consortium brings together 13 organisations from 7 countries and is led by i-propeller. The consortium members are already active in scaling social innovations today. Consortium members were carefully selected for their ability to implement the necessary knowledge management and coordination support to identify social innovations and support in their scale-up, not only through the resources extant within their member networks, but through identification and exploitation of opportunities to work in a coordinated manner between networks. Please find below a description of each of the partners.
i-propeller is a research and development and consultant group for social and open innovation based in Brussels, spin off from KU Leuven. i-propeller is active in the field of sustainability, energy efficiency, diversity and inclusion, health and poverty. i-propeller has developed a network of more than 1,500 social enterprises in Europe. I-propeller has developed a unique eco-system with several dedicated organisations such as Innovation & Action Lab, SI² Fund, and Social Innovation Acceleratior where each organisation has a dedicated role in scaling a social innovators and social entrepreneurship in Belgium and abroad.
