The Webinar is organized by Università di Bologna in collaboration with: ART-ER, Better Incubation, Fa’ la cosa giusta, Fondazione CRT, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Inkubator Sežana, Politecnico di Torino.
The field of social entrepreneurship is various and complex. It includes multiple actors and it’s developing more and more. The webinar aims to give insights on this field, presenting recent research data about Europe and Italy. The data helps to depict a clearer situation, even if social entrepreneurship is still growing and constantly changing. After the first introductory contribution, the webinar focuses on specific cases and approaches which favour the development of social entrepreneurship. Specific approach to sustain social entrepreneurship are presented, such as the tight partnership of a public actor with social entrepreneurs and incubators, and policy recommendations on how to sustain inclusive incubation.
Afterwards, Italian and European actual cases of social enterprises are described and commented, in order to share with participants potentialities and criticalities of social entrepreneurship.
Agenda:
Introduction by Unibo
Social entrepreneurship and social ecosystems – Paolo Landoni, Politecnico di Torino
Key regional stakeholders for social innovation and social entrepreneurship – Kristian Mancinone, Art-ER, Chiara Davalli, EBN / Better Incubation
CASES OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
• FabriQ (Italy) – Deborah Greco, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini
• Inkubator Sežana (Slovenia) – Dorijan Marsic, Director of Incubator Sezana
• Case to be defined – Zoe McDonagh, Fondazione CRT,
• Si parte dal Bosco (Italy) – Piero Brunod, Fa la cosa giusta Network
Q&A: check on Miro blackboard whether participants interact and read out loud what they wrote + open the discussion in the call for questions and comments.
]]>Don’t worry! Recordings are now available online!
The series facilitated informal conversations between a diverse range of investors for impact and business support organisations with regards to pipeline building.
Switch Pitch with Seed Capital Bizkaia & Ship2B
In this episode of the Switch Pitch Series, Oscar Ugarte Gamboa, Seed Capital Bizkaia, and Xavier Pont Martin, Ship2B, explain how they work with incubators and accelerators – and how this collaboration can be improved to better support impact driven businesses.
Switch Pitch with Cartier Women’s Initiative
In this episode of the Switch Pitch Series, Wingee Sampaio, Cartier Women’s Initiative, explained how they work with incubators and accelerators – and how this collaboration can be improved to better support impact driven businesses.
Switch Pitch with Feelsgood Capital and Portus Buda Group FMC
In this episode of the Switch Pitch Series, Renata Brkic, FeelsGood Capital, and Elemér Eszter, Portus Buda Group FMC, explained how they work with incubators and accelerators – and how this collaboration can be improved to better support impact driven businesses.
Switch Pitch with World Startup
In this episode of the Switch Pitch Series, Jan Verkooijen, World Startup, explained how they work with incubators and accelerators – and how this collaboration can be improved to better support impact driven businesses.
Switch Pitch with INCO
In this episode of the Switch Pitch Series, Jean Michel Lecuyer, INCO, explained how they work with incubators and accelerators – and how this collaboration can be improved to better support impact driven businesses.
Switch Pitch with FASE
In this episode of the Switch Pitch Series, Markus Freiburg, FASE, explain how they work with incubators and accelerators – and how this collaboration can be improved to better support impact driven businesses.
]]>Back in October, over 80 international business support experts, thought leaders, and innovation practitioners gathered in Lipica, Slovenia, to explore the European innovation ecosystem’s untapped potential in becoming more inclusive and diverse and how to re-strategize, upskill and expand business support services to service a new generation of impactful start-ups. It was co-hosted by EU|BIC Inkubator Sežana and was powered by Better Incubation, a project funded by the European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation.
Don’t forget that you can still access all experts’ presentations and watch the event pictures here.
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- Better Incubation final event at EVPA Annual Conference 2022
- Better Incubation latest publications: the Better Incubation Roadmap, the Insights Paper, and the Final Policy Recommendations – including the 15 regional manifestos summarising the key outcomes of the regional policy workshops that took place in September and October 2022 in 14 European countries.
- Better Incubation highlights for the 5 target groups of underrepresented entrepreneurs: factsheets, videos and training modules.
Find out more information about Better Incubation news by reading the newsletter here: Better Incubation Newsletter 8_December 2022
]]>The Commission calls on Member States to encourage mainstream business incubators to extend their support to social economy entities, to improve business investment readiness support opportunities. The ‘Better Incubator’ pilot launched by the European Commission can serve as inspiration.
The final objective of Better Incubation is to kick-start an “eco-systemic” change by bringing incubation and business support services closer to society and contributing to societal needs through entrepreneurship and self-employment based on job creation, skills development, and provision of opportunities for unemployed and vulnerable people to fully participate in the society and economy.
To achieve this goal, BSOs are called to act in synergy with the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem, as individual business incubators are not going to be able to change the culture and institutional practices around social and inclusive entrepreneurship alone.
Besides focusing on the internal capacities of BSOs, the Better Incubation project approach is also outward-looking to the wider ecosystem, considering broader cultural and institutional change needed to meet the objectives stated above.
This report presents the key findings resulting from the work carried out by the Better Incubation Consortium over the last 2 years and involving several European stakeholders in a series of learning, experimentation, and reflection activities on the role mainstream BSOs can play in better promoting and supporting social and inclusive entrepreneurship in Europe and beyond.
Download it here: D2.3_Better Incubation_Policy Recommendations_Edit
Based on the insights from the preliminary research on existing inclusive incubation practices, the learnings from the 21 Better Incubation pilots, offering incubation services to more than 130 entrepreneurs/would-be entrepreneurs in 19 EaSI countries, and the existing recommendations in the Better Entrepreneurship Policy Tool and EU policies, CoPs elaborated policy recommendations.
Better Incubation Policy Recommendations were validated and enriched during 15 regional policy workshops that involved more than 260 stakeholders in 14 European countries. These discussions resulted in 15 regional policy manifestos highlighting regional priorities and steps needed to better promote and support social and inclusive entrepreneurship in those territories and ecosystems. These are available at the end of this document.
Following an in depth discussion with the Better Incubation Advisory Board members (ENSIE, Cooperatives Europe, Caritas Europa, EMES), a final validation was performed in Brussels on December 2nd, 2022, during the Better Incubation EU Policy Workshop, that saw the active participation of 22 stakeholders representing European policy makers, researchers, regional and national public authorities, investors, incubators, entrepreneurs, social actors, and non-governmental organisations contributing to the European social and inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem.
We are now glad to release the Better Incubation Policy Recommendations, a set of reflections and ideas aimed at providing some inspiration for BSOs and other stakeholders to work together towards a more inclusive and impact-driven entrepreneurship ecosystem across Europe.
We recommend reading the Better Incubation key publications to get more details about these findings and the background information informing these final recommendations:
]]>The Lebanese economy needs more than ever a productive private sector capable of driving economic recovery, create jobs, and support a fragile balance of payment by producing local goods and services, increasing exports and diversify export markets.
In this context, the WOMEN ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT FOR LEBANON PROJECT (WEEL) aims at Supporting Women-Owned And Women-Led Businesses In Lebanon by providing between 8 and 20 MSMEs and startups with grants that vary from 15,000 to 50,000 Euros to be used for expending investments, covering expenditures and getting technical assistance.
This project is part of a larger programme, the EU for Women Empowerment (EU4WE), a 42-month programme (October 2019 – March 2023) funded by the European Union and implemented by Expertise France. It aims at promoting full and unconditional equality between men and women in Lebanon. The specific purpose of EU4WE is to reduce gender-based violence through women’s empowerment and enhance existing institutional mechanisms working towards gender equality.
]]>During the closing session of the final event of Better Incubation at the EVPA Annual Conference 2022, we asked the Better Incubation project managers of IHUB, EVPA and EBN to summarise their project experience in one word.
Lucia Radu, IHUB, highlighted the intense capacity building programme offered by Better Incubation through the Communities of Practice and the online Training Courses on Social Entrepreneurship, Inclusive Etrepreneurship and Impact Management and Measurement. More than a training opportunity, rather a dedicated space for BSOs to learn from peers and other relevant stakeholders committed to promote and support entrepreneurship as an opportunity for all in society – especially among the so-called Underrepresented and Vulnerable Groups.
Valeria Balzarini, EVPA, used the word perspective to explain how EVPA and its members used the Better Incubation project to rethink their approach to Underrepresented Entrepreneurs (UREs), this by connecting and working with BSOs and UREs directly.
Chiara Davalli, EBN, stressed the importance of Networks, of a Network of Networks like Better Incubation to achieve so many important results over a relatively short period of 2 years, where more than 133 entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs from URGs received incubation programmes from 21 organisations in 14 European countries. EBN, IHUB and EVPA, with the support and advice of Caritas Europa, ENSIE, EMES, Cooperatives Europe, managed to mobilise the European entrepreneurial ecosystem thanks to the active engagement of their members (EU|BICs, Impact Hubs and invesotrs for impact) who took this opportunity to rethink their programmes, their organisations and their ecosystems in a more inclusive and impact-driven way.
The event started in the morning with an EU Policy Workshop aimed at sharing and validating Better Incubation Policy Recommendations with policymakers, researchers, BSOs, investors for impact, regional development agencies, national agencies for social innovation and pan-European networks like Eurocities and Euclid. An interactive workshop where 25+ participants where asked to discuss the 6 issues identified by the project as the ones the entrepreneural ecosystem(s) in Europe need to consider and address to boost social and inclusive entrepreneurship in Europe.
Some of these policy recommendations were taken into account by Mrs Brigitte Fellahi-Brugneau, Head of Unit at DG Employment, that during the afternoon session shared some reflections from the policymakers’ point of view on how Better Incubation contributed to promote and support social and inclusive entrepreneurship in Europe, by leveraging the knowledge, the competencies, the networks of mainstream business support organisations.
Then it was the turn of the Directors and Managers representing EVPA, IHUB and EBN who shared some insights on the relevance of the Better Incubation programme for their communities.
They all agreed that as organisations, the project offered a unique opportunity to grow knowledge, tools and methodologies for BSOs and investors for impact willing to broaden their scope to social and inclusive entrepreneurship. Moreover, Better Incubation enabled the three networks to involve their members and let them cooperate directly, this leading to new partnerships, opportunities and wider impact.
The event continued with the VOICES of Better Incubation: seven “ah-ah moments” telling the stories of EU|BICs, Impact Hubs, Investors for Impact and other stakeholders involved in the project activities. Regional policy workshops’ organisers, inclusive incubation programmes managers, CoPs experts and facilitators, trainings and networking events’ participants, investors mentoring winners of the Better Incubation Contest, Scaling Impact. These the perspectives represented in this crowded and emotional panel, a conversation that showed how Better Incubation successfully managed to kick-start an ecosystemic change in the incubation ecosystem.
Last but not least, the winners of the Better Incubation Contest were on stage to share how the scaling programme of Better Incubation project is helping them understanding and moving the first steps into new markets in Europe.
Believe, dare, learn and amplify your impact without giving up! This in a nutshell their advice to would-be entrepreneurs!
It was a great conclusion of two years of intense project activities. You can still watch the Better Incubation Project Finale recordings online!
]]>The Commission calls on Member States to encourage mainstream business incubators to extend their support to social economy entities, to improve business investment readiness support opportunities. The ‘Better Incubator’ pilot launched by the European Commission can serve as inspiration’ .
Better Incubation aims to enhance the inclusiveness of BSOs by stimulating a wider cultural change in the incubation ecosystem, therefore involving regional and EU stakeholders (investors, policymakers, social actors, BSOs) that can contribute to this paradigm shift.
After 2 years of project activities, it is time to share key learnings on how to boost the promotion and support of impact-driven and inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems in Europe and beyond.
Organised in the framework of the EVPA Annual Conference 2022, the session “Better Incubation: Project Finale | Towards an impact-driven and inclusive approach to innovative entrepreneurship in Europe” is structured in 4 key moments:
- How BSOs can contribute to the implementation of the Social Economy Action Plan? Brigitte Fellahi-Brognaux, Head of Unit, European Commission DG EMPL
- Beyond Better Incubation – Partner Networks’ reflections on the way forward A conversation with Tatiana Glad, IHUB; Roberta Bosurgi, EVPA ; Laura Lecci, EBN
- “Voices of Better Incubation” We’ll hear different experiences of Better Incubation. What did the programme offer to their orgnisations, their territories and communities? What are the plans for the future?
- Scaling Impact. Meet the Winners of the Better Incubation Contest 2022. We’ll discover the entrepreneurial journey of the three finalists of the Better Incubation Contest 2022| Scaling Impact. Their stories, their plans, their impact
The session starts at 14.30 CET and it is going to be live streamed on Better Incubation Twitter account, LinkedIn page and EBN YouTube Channel.
AGENDA
Room Orangerie, on the 2nd floor & Live Streaming
| 14:30-14:40 | Welcome and introduction about Better Incubation, Chiara Davalli, EBN |
| 14.40-15.10
|
How BSOs can contribute to the implementation of the Social Economy Action Plan?
Brigitte Fellahi-Brognaux, Head of Unit, European Commission DG EMPL Beyond Better Incubation – Partner Networks’ reflections on the way forward A conversation with Tatiana Glad, IHUB; Alessia Gianoncelli, EVPA ; Laura Lecci, EBN |
| 15.10-15.30 | “Voices of Better Incubation” moderated by Lucia Radu, Impact Hub
We’ll hear different experiences of Better Incubation. What did the programme offer to their orgnisations, their territories and communities? What are the plans for the future?
|
| 15.30-15.50 | Scaling Impact. Meet the Winners of the Better Incubation Contest 2022, moderated by Laura Lecci, EBN
We’ll discover the entrepreneurial journey of the three finalists of the Better Incubation Contest 2022| Scaling Impact. Their stories, their plans, their impact.
|
| 15.50-16.00 | Closing session with the three partner networks |
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The upcoming WEgate webinar (on 24 November on Zoom) will focus on a series of initiatives that support the skilling process for women in business.
They will be presenting three good practices for skills development:
- DITA – Innovative platform for supporting your digital transformation, presented by Loredana Flego, NeroSuBianco
- TalentA – education and support programme for women farmers, presented by Margit Batthyány-Schmidt, Union of Hungarian Women
- National Platform for Women Entrepreneurship – connecting & empowering women entrepreneurs and stakeholders, presented by Emilija Andonova, Foundation for Management and Industrial Research
| REGISTRATION LINK |
Have a look to the Better Incubation Community of Practice on Women Entreprenurship for more info and details on the topic.
- Better Incubation Scaling Programme for the 3 finalists of the Better Incubation Contest 2022
- Innovation, impact, SDGs, and inclusivity of innovative entrepreneurs – the story of the 2022 EBN Techcamp by Better Incubation
- Better Incubation facts and figures – key project highlights
- Better Incubation final event at EVPA Annual Conference 2022
Find out more information about Better Incubation news by reading the newsletter here : Better Incubation Newsletter 7_November 2022
]]>Techcamp showcased experiences and strategies and co-developed innovation support programs to give the European innovation ecosystem a competitive advantage by embracing diversity and an impact-driven approach to supporting (tech) entrepreneurship.
It was held on the 19th and 20th of October in Lipica, Slovenia, to explore the European innovation ecosystem’s untapped potential in becoming more inclusive and diverse and how to re-strategize, upskill and expand business support services to service a new generation of impactful start-ups. It was co-hosted by EU|BIC Inkubator Sežana and was powered by Better Incubation, a project funded by the European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation.
Inkubator Sežana is one of our quality-certified EU|BICS who decided to join the Better Incubation project. They quickly became an example for the community by designing a successful and effective incubation support programme for hearing-impaired entrepreneurs. Their motivation and success, as well as the celebration of their 30th anniversary, are one of the sources of inspiration that brought the EBN Techcamp to Lipica.
The EBN Techcamp is the second of our yearly events and the one that most showcases methodologies, practices, techniques, and tools that the community can bring back to their country and region to better support entrepreneurial innovation. This year, our focus on impact-driven and inclusive entrepreneurship is in large part because we know the challenges the community is facing. We wanted to empower them with the tools that can bring long-lasting resolutions – by increasing the pool of entrepreneurs, diversifying the type of companies they support, and more completely investing in their region’s (sustainable and social) economic development.
Laura Lecci, CEO at EBN
As remarked by the EC and the OECD, inclusive entrepreneurship is an integral part of growth. A widespread business creation by people of all groups helps generate jobs and combat social and financial exclusion while stimulating economic growth. Evidence shows that women, youth, seniors, immigrants, and people with disabilities are often underrepresented in the entrepreneurial space and, on average, less likely to succeed in creating high-growth firms due to a lack of networks, and access to finance, and less adequate ways to gain skills needed grow a company. At the same time, social enterprises are longstanding agents of inclusive growth and have proved remarkably resilient in the face of economic adversity. By design, social enterprises address socioeconomic challenges in innovative ways and engage citizens to become part of the solution.
Over 8 parallel deep-dive sessions, the 2022 EBN Techcamp offered EU|BICs, and BSOs a space to share, debate, and test practices, methods and tools for impact-driven and inclusive entrepreneurship promotion and support. Some of them resulted from the involvement of EBN and IHUB members in 21 Better Incubation pilots that led to new inclusive incubation programmes that involved more than 130 entrepreneurs over 6 months. Tools, methods, and recommendations have been shared during the Techcamp, and are also available in the Better Incubation Toolkit, the Better Incubation Collection of Best Practices, the Inspirational Videos, and the upcoming Better Incubation Insights Paper (focus on programmatic level) and the Better Incubation Roadmap (focus on organizational level).
Photos by Jan Antonac from VSS Sežana
There is evidence that business incubators and business accelerators can be effective supports for new and growing businesses, and evaluations suggest similar results can be achieved in business incubators that focus on supporting entrepreneurs from underrepresented and disadvantaged groups. The keys to success for these initiatives include offering strong preincubation services, building strong linkages with mainstream business support providers and investors, delivering support in flexible modules, and ensuring incubator staff is trained to support the targeted entrepreneurs.
This year’s EBN Techcamp empowered its participants to support a new generation of impactful tech start-ups – companies that are both profitable and work to improve society, operating ‘’double bottom line’’ business models – and to leverage diversity and inclusion and become relevant, competitive, and gain an advantage.
Cristina Fanjul, President of EBN
The event counted on the contribution of many local and international speakers who shared their experiences and best practices for innovation support. Speakers included: Dr. Aida Kamišalić Latifić, the secretary of state at the Slovenian Ministry of Digital Transformation, and David Škabar, Mayor of Sežana, who spoke of the importance of innovation and digitalization in Slovenia for its future; Cristina Fanjul, EBN President, Dorijan Maršič, Director at Inkubator Sežana, both addressing the importance of increased inclusivity for the future of European innovation and sharing their personal experience in the subject; and Tobias Temmen, Venture Partner at Kellogg-WHU, Stanford Change Labs, Andreja Jaklič, Professor at the University of Ljubljana – Faculty of Social Science, and Flora Rosenow, Global Brand Strategy & Communication for Impact expert, who lead workshops on the creation of incubation modules, guaranteeing its societal value from innovation ecosystems, and measuring and communicating its value to others – respectively.
Better Incubation is a joint initiative of EBN, Impact Hub and EVPA, funded by the European Union, to kickstart an “eco-systemic” change by bringing incubation and business support services closer to society as a whole and to promote entrepreneurship and self-employment as means to create jobs, develop skills, and give the unemployed and vulnerable an opportunity to fully participate in the economy and improve the inclusivity of our societies (www.betterincubation.eu)
]]>This Toolkit is a comprehensive collection of handson tools and methodologies for business support organisations aiming to make their incubation and other business support programmes more inclusive and accessible. The Toolkit is based on the experience and exchange among members of the Communities of Practice of the Better Incubation initiative.
It invites managers and contributors to incubation and other business support services to an honest analysis of their practices and gives them tools to go beyond the usual suspects as participants in their programmes.
Being based on the experiences of the inclusive pilot programmes run within the Better Incubation framework, it is not an exhaustive list but offers itself as a starting point for all business support organisations to go beyond the status quo, i.e., mainstream entrepreneurship. This pilot has been running in many European countries: Spain, Portugal, United Kindom, France, Luxemburg, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italt, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.
How to use the Toolkit
The Toolkit is organised in line with the common steps of designing and running a business support
programme. You can easily navigate these different steps below and jump directly to where you are at, or you can read from beginning to end to get a better grasp of the many facets and perspectives when it comes to inclusion and accessibility in incubation and business support. For each step, different tools are listed and you can pick out what best fits your reality.
Speaking of the steps of designing and implementing a business support programme: one important suggestion this Toolkit makes is to add step 2: Removing barriers to processes of developing and running business support programmes. Transforming your spaces and offerings to be more inclusive is not a one-time moment. It needs to happen throughout the programme cycle. However, having accessibility as a step just like “designing the programme” or “selecting participants” highlights the importance of gaining awareness about barriers that people may face in accessing programmes. This approach resonates with a wider mission of the Better Incubation project of placing incubators as catalysts in the entrepreneurship ecosystems and thus allowing them to go beyond their intermediary role.
The 5 Groups in Focus
Woman
The European business and entrepreneurship ecosystem is far from being diverse and inclusive. According to the OECD report , women were half as likely as men to be self-employed , while the share of women who started their own business only increased by 2%. This gap can be explained by deep structural imbalances against female business founders, such as lack of access to finance, low opportunity perception regarding entrepreneurship among women, lack of role models or competing demands on time, with a double burden on home and work responsibilities for women.
Migrants and Refugees
In 2020, the number of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe increased to an unprecedented 23 million . Entrepreneurship therefore represents a great opportunity for refugees and other migrants to rebuild their lives and contribute to the economy and society in their new home country. Relevant business support services can help address these challenges, but it needs to be accompanied by a change of mindset in the sector to better reflect on the real needs of migrant entrepreneurs.
Youth
Youth unemployment represents one of the major social and economic challenges in Europe, with more than 16.5% of them being unemployed in 2018 . In response to the challenges the youth encounters when searching for jobs, entrepreneurship offers an alternative pathway to economic self-sufficiency. Critical success conditions can be provided by training and incubation programmes targeted at the youth to nurture their entrepreneurial attitudes and skills.
Seniors
With the ongoing demographic change and the ageing population in Europe, supporting entrepreneurial skills and becoming self-employed could be considered as innovative ways for middle-aged group workers to continue their professional activity . These include difficulties with mastering digital skills, health issues or social isolation. These demographic changes also affect business incubation support services because a new growing client group is emerging.
People with disabilities
The complexity of this group stems from the fact that disabilities are extremely diverse and are not fixed characteristic of individuals . People with disabilities face many barriers in the labour market, and employer discrimination is frequently reported.
Tools for…
- Desinging inclusive support programmes
- Empathy interviews
- Co-creation with organisations in the field
- Personas
- Flexible modular design
- Removing barriers
- Analyse application data
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
- Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Training
- Scouting for and selecting diverse participants
- Community Mapping
- Channels Mapping
- Equity-informed selection
- Delivering the right programme support
- Needs assessement
- Business model basics
- Safer space
- Onion principle and confidence building
- Connecting participans to supportive people
- Intentional mentor matching
- Purposeful hosting
- Peer-to-peer support
- Facilitating access to capital
- Map funding possibilities
- Pitch training
- Offer funding
- Manageing impact
- Impact mesurement platform
- Exit interviews with participants
- Competence framework
You can find more informaton HERE
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