Lourdes Mirón is president of Jovesólides and director of the International Forum of Social Innovation. In this short interview he tells us what the Escuela Creactiva is, how it was born and the main objectives of the association when getting involved in this initiative.
What is the Escuela Creactiva? What drives Jovesólides to get involved in this initiative?
It is a space to share knowledge and new practices in entrepreneurship and social innovation. From Jovesólides we created it to be a meeting point for companies, administrations, platforms and NGOs that want to do things in a different way. It is focused on all those actors who wish to promote creativity and socio-economic alternatives of social participation, from an inclusive and participatory vision. It is, in short, a space for meeting and learning to promote, expedite, a necessary social change.
This web space will be a meeting point for people linked to the field of entrepreneurship and Social Innovation, what can the people who access it find?
In the web space you will find innovative methodologies, designed by Jovesólides, aimed at promoting a positive social impact. In addition, they can also have another series of tools for learning, knowledge, information about the sector… the Creactive School was born as a window to promote knowledge about social entrepreneurship; to promote social innovation in the business ecosystem of the Valencian Community; and to stimulate intersectoral collaborative work. Therefore, all the spaces on the web are aimed at these three objectives of the initiative.
The motto that accompanies the initiative is ‘we bring value, we add the ‘s’ to your innovation’. What value does Jovesólides bring to companies or organizations that contact the entity?
From Jovesólides we discover what social innovation is, and we also implement in the innovation processes that companies already have in operation that not only think about how to get more money but also generate social impact. There are many options to generate positive impact: from working with fair trade products, to hiring groups at risk of exclusion, Environmental Protection…
For Jovesólides, innovation is fundamentally about generating creative ideas to solve social problems. This that seems so simple, requires a combination of factors that together can increase the likelihood that an idea is innovative: incorporate creativity techniques into the ideation process, listening to the community affected by the problem, generate ideas that are scalable, or teamwork, among others. And all these factors are what we discover and we also work for a company or entity to add the’ s ‘ to its innovation and that ultimately adds value.
The entity has a long history in the field of social Innovation. What remains to be improved and is urgent?
There is an urgent need for the business sector to become more involved in social issues, especially medium and small enterprises. More and more companies are joining, but much work remains to be done. I believe that we should move towards a model in which corporate social responsibility departments disappear and companies choose to incorporate in their DNA the criteria of the social and solidarity economy. To R + D + I you have to incorporate an ‘s’ of social.
Therefore, from the entity we bet on initiatives such as the Creactive School, to favor the discovery and implementation of social innovation in all areas. From 2008 to the present, Jovesólides has developed a total of 147 actions, more than 120 laboratories and 4 forums. All these activities have been aimed at promoting innovation and social entrepreneurship in 20 countries in Europe and Latin America.
