Made in Danube  Social Innovation trainings successfully delivered in Novi Sad and Vinkovci!

Two interesting events were organised last week by our partners in Croatia and Serbia  and with the expert support by ZSI – Centre for Social Innovation!

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, two social innovation trainings were held respectively in Novi Sad (28/11) and Vinkovci (29/11). Both events were largely attended by local SMEs, researchers, policy makers and 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 and (1) the business model canvas and (2) design thinking method 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 tob e 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. Stay tuned to learn more and come to our third event!