This week Yvette Torres-Rahman, Partnerships Director at Business Fights Poverty, interviews Teodora Berkova, Director of Social Innovation, Pearson.
Teodora talks about our Social Innovation Challenge, supported by Pearson, Barclays and CEMEX. The Challenge focuses on the question: What know-how do employees need to drive corporate social innovation??
A growing number of companies seek to develop profitable new products, services and/or business models that also create social and/or environmental value. They believe these “social innovations” can help them reach new markets, respond to technological and political changes affecting their industries, and live up to their sustainable development commitments. To facilitate this, companies are building internal support structures including investment funds, incubators, “hackathons,” leadership development programmes, online platforms and communities of practice. A key priority is to ensure that employees have the know-how they need to take advantage of these offerings and bring their ideas to fruition.
The Challenge is engaging employees from Barclays, Pearson and Cemex and members of the Business Fights Poverty community to understand what skills employees need most to transform their ideas into positive results for their companies and for society. This is informing the development of a series of skills-focused webinars and tip sheets that intrapreneurial employees – who are often engaging in social innovation on top of their day jobs – can use to come up to speed.
