RESIST

Interreg Baltic Sea region program for 2021-2027 project “Social innovation and social entrepreneurship ecosystems”

(acronym – RESIST) Project No.: C037

RESIST
In the project RESIST, regional authorities, business support organisations and sectoral agencies develop a model of how to open up existing regional innovation ecosystems for social innovators and social entrepreneurs tackling societal and environmental challenges.

Social innovators and social entrepreneurs can play an important role in finding creative and unconventional solutions to current transformative challenges such as migration, the transition to a carbon neutral society, or digitisation. But to turn good ideas into practice they need help – in terms of qualification, funding and access to markets and cooperation partners. Regional public authorities, business support organisations and sectoral agencies in the Baltic Sea Region are already very effectively providing such support to mainstream innovators and entrepreneurs, but they have yet to realise the benefits of adapting their offers to the needs of social enterprises. The RESIST project supports these institutions in creating better and more supportive regional ecosystems for social innovation (SI) and social entrepreneurship (SE) and in making existing innovation support more accessible for social entrepreneurs. The project partners explore the concept of “clusters of social and ecological innovation” (CSEI) as a model for fostering cross-sectoral collaboration, and they develop and test a programme to improve the capacity of innovation support actors to foster social innovation. In the long run, the objective is to raise the number of CSEIs in the BSR and to facilitate cooperation between them. Throughout the process, the involved regions will also collect ideas and recommendations for improving the integration of social innovation in their regional innovation strategies.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTERS:

Lead partner:

• Ministry of Economics and Innovation of the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg, DE

Project partners:

• Zukunft zwei GmbH (DE)
• Pomože Voivodeship (PL)
• Federation of Pomeranian NGO Support Centers (PL)
• Lithuanian Innovation Center (LT)
• Kurzeme planning region (LV)
• Riga Technical University (LV)
• Social Innovation Center (LV)
• Voru County Development Center (EE)
• Västerbotten region (SE)
• Malmö University (SE)
• Agder County (NO)
• European Social Fund Agency (LT);
• Tallinn University (EE)

Target groups:

• Business support organisation
• Local public authority
• NGO
• Regional public authority
• Sectoral agency

PROJECT ACTIVITIES:

1.  Project administration:
   • Project management meetings;
   • Preparation of project reports;
   • Working group for project partners (discussions and brainstorming/discussions of progress of project activities).
2. Publicity activities: Publicity on partners’ websites and social network accounts;
3. Developing solutions for integrating social innovations and social entrepreneurship into the ecosystem:
   • assessment of the existing support system
   • development of recommendations for improvements in the accessibility of the existing support system
   • developed new offers and associated training/outreach concept
4. Based on the developed improvements and suggestions, their piloting and testing in social innovation and social entrepreneurship support organizations
5. Training support for social innovations and social entrepreneurship ecosystem participants