EU project POSITIVESteinbeis Europa Zentrum coordinates a new international initiative to interlink tech and social innovation ecosystems

The concept of social innovation has been gaining momentum in recent years. However, research has shown that social innovators face many challenges in developing and scaling their businesses. Among the most prominent are: access to markets, financial sustainability, entrepreneurial skills, and appropriate networks.

„The challenges faced by the social innovators are far from unknown to the tech innovation ecosystem. Observation of these existing similarities among the obstacles both tech and social innovators have to overcome gave us a spark to form a team of experts from both ecosystems in three European countries: Germany, Italy, and Lithuania. This is how the POSITIVE project started – with the team, willing to take action toward interlinking two valuable ecosystems using our collective experience, networks, and knowledge“ – Miljana Cosic, Senior Project Manager at Steinbeis Europa Zentrum and coordinator of the POSITIVE project.

POSITIVE stands for Participatory Open Social Innovation Through Interlinking Valuable Ecosystems. With the main purpose of bridging the gap between two ecosystems, the project will address the above-mentioned challenges by driving external and internal factors through knowledge transfer, training, and cross-fertilization between the fields of technology and social innovation. The ambitious goals will be achieved by joining forces from both worlds, as all three countries are represented by partners from both tech and social innovation support ecosystems.

The international initiative POSITIVE held its Kick-off meeting in Freiburg, Germany, on the 14-15th of February 2023, marking the beginning of an almost two-year-long project ahead.

„We at Gruenhof Social Innovation Lab were excited to host the team of POSITIVE for the official start of our project. I am confident that meeting each other in person will not only pave the way for successful cooperation in the future but also allow our tech partners to better understand how social innovations work since we already had an opportunity to share good practices we foster in Social Innovation Lab as well as introduce our partners to some social innovation cases developed here, in Freiburg“ – summarised Vivien Riener, Project Manager for POSITIVE at Gruenhof.

POSITIVE is an international project, funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe program. If you are interested to know more, do not hesitate to contact us.

Project partners of POSITIVE