Impact – Building values-based innovation cultures for sustainable business impact – in an European project funded under the Erasmus + Knowledge Alliances 2020.
The project started on the 1st January 2021, and on the 28 th January the Kick-Off Meeting took place (virtually). It will last for 36 months, ending on the 31st December 2023.
Background of the project: Almost every company and organisation in Europe is asked to adopt sustainability goals as part of its mission and innovation management. Many have explicitly adapted their strategies, but few have established inherent practices in their organizational culture and manage innovation based on values of corporate sustainability. We collaborate with the few to exchange experiences and knowledge on how to translate sustainability strategies into innovation culture.
IMPACT is a practice-based, sustainability-oriented, and result-driven project aiming to advance Europe’s capacity and effectiveness in training and teaching sustainability-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship (SOIE). The ambition of the project is to drive innovation and entrepreneurship based on values of corporate sustainability, and to facilitate organisation-wide cultural change toward more sustainable innovation processes. With its explicit focus on sustainability, IMPACT makes a unique contribution to effectively translating Europe’s new growth strategy presented in the “Green Deal” into an innovative educational program and business practice.
More specifically, IMPACT brings together leaders from industry, academia and innovation ecosystems to:
- empirically generate, aggregate, exchange and disseminate knowledge about good practices and methods in SOIE
- facilitate values-based and sustainability-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship practices and methods that help to establish a sustainability-oriented innovation culture
- create advanced education methods and real problem-based materials to teach and learn SOIE
IMPACT builds on the results of previous projects and draws on the experience of innovation scholars and practitioners to generate actionable insights for students, young entrepreneurs and industrial partners striving to make a positive impact on society as a whole. The main outcomes of the project are:
I) a database of concrete examples and best practices for enhancing sustainability;
II) facilitation methods toolkit for enabling the effective involvement of internal and external stakeholders in innovation- related activities, as well as the collaborative review and redefinition of cultural routines, implicit values and hidden assumptions;
III) methods for teaching and coaching SOIE toolkit, which includes a module on Sustainable Innovation Practices (12 ECTS) for professional development and elective university courses.
Impact’s contributions can be summarized as it follows:
- It helps to turn the European “Green Deal” and according corporate strategies into daily business practices and innovation culture.
- It helps to strengthen Europe’s capacity for values-based innovation and foster entrepreneurship in higher education, business and society at large.
- Most importantly, it ensures that the new innovation and entrepreneurship approaches are based on values of different stakeholders, striving for enhanced sustainability and making positive impact to the broader socioeconomic environment.
- In addition, IMPACT supports the modernization of Europe’s higher education systems by ensuring that higher education institutions contribute to innovation and promote excellence in skills development on sustainability and values-based innovation.
- Finally, IMPACT promotes the intelligent use of digital tools by putting forward webinars and podcasts, online workshops and learning modules.
For more information, please check the project website: https://www.impact-project.site/
