At a time when social entrepreneurship is slowly spreading in Europe as a third way between companies and charities, Incubators 4 Change (I4C) will draw on the learning from the field to create 3 new Incubators of social enterprises programmes in HEIs from the Mediterranean (Spain and Turkey) and MENA (Morocco/France) regions. This project responds to the need of students in Europe and beyond who are becoming increasingly aware of the need for their future companies to have a societal engagement as shown by the recent climate change students movement and other petitions for enterprises to become more socially and environmentally responsible. The objectives for I4C will be: - to create new knowledge around the field of incubators of social enterprises in HEIs across Europe and beyond - to use this knowledge to develop new curricula for students around social entrepreneurship in HEIs including practical experience through the incubators, with a focus on disability-related projects and female entrepreneurship - to provide non-financial support to social entrepreneurs and help them become sustainable - to connect local/regional actors of social innovation in the test bed territories for the support and sustainability of the social enterprises - to disseminate teaching and training tools in local languages and in English in order to maximise the scope of potential adopters of the methodology to build new incubators of social enterprises in HEIs. Incubators 4 Change will involve 1500+ students in the social entrepreneurship programmes of the 3 HEIs over 3 years through new curricula that will combine theoretical and practical input depending on the type of courses elected by the students. At the same time Incubators 4 Change will support 18/24 social enterprises across the 3 test-beds (6/8 per test bed) and through them help 180/200+ beneficiaries within the implementation year. The process for drawing new curricula and the implementation of the incubators in 3 HEIs will provide data and learning for 7 intellectual outputs, 4 for academic and teaching purposes, 3 for adult professional training purposes. The intellectual outputs will be disseminated to a large network of not only HEIs but also stakeholders from the social innovation sector in test bed communities (Europe, the MENA region) and beyond, i.e. local authorities, funders and investors interested in supporting social enterprises or developing incubators in their area. The project will follow a collaborative action research methodology, with literature and practice reviews in the preparation phase, the implementation of 3 incubators for social enterprises in HEIs (based on the reviews), and a social impact evaluation and dissemination phase in the third year. Expected long term impacts will include: - the creation of new curricula on social entrepreneurship in the consortium HEIs and beyond with a specific disability strand - the training/awareness raising for 1500+ students over 3 years, with an expected 5% choosing a career/internship in ‘societal good’ - the creation of 40 jobs in social enterprises and 400+ beneficiaries of these social enterprises over 2 years - the creation of 15+ new local partnerships connected through incubators of social enterprises in the test beds through local stakeholders such as local authorities and funders/impact investors.
The project originally had several objectives: We sought to advance knowledge about the social entrepreneurship support ecosystem, particularly for institutions of higher education (HEIs), Develop theoretical and practical teaching of social entrepreneurship, as well as awareness around this topic for students Supporting social entrepreneurs through non-financial support programs, We also have looked to identify and gather good practices around the support of social entrepreneurs, in order to create tools and good practice guides, easy to use and to disseminate, for practitioners, students, professionals (professors, students, incubators, corporations, HEIs), Finally, we have aimed to participate in solving social and environmental issues through the support of social entrepreneurs, and the focus of our work, notably: gender equality, as well as support for people with disabilities.
We decided to launch this project to work on different needs that we had identified in our ecosystem, including: - Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have the need to develop knowledge around social entrepreneurship and social enterprise incubators, in order to better understand these practices, and to transmit them, - More and more students are expressing the need to study and experiment social entrepreneurship, - Social entrepreneurs need support to develop their venture, and increase their impact, - Different actors (companies, HEIs, public institutions, funders.) have expressed their need to acquire good practice in supporting social entrepreneurs, in order to help them grow, - In a more global point of view, supporting social entrepreneurs allows the resolution of social and environmental issues that are prevalent in European societies. We had met other HEIs during a Euclid Network workshop who wanted to learn from ESSEC’s experience of developing our incubators over 10 years, as they were trying to either start an incubator within their Business School or develop an incubator they had only just started.