Today, Kevin Kempter will share his experience about his start-up Elderli and his ongoing BRIDGE Proof of Concept project hosted by the HETSL – Haute école de travail social et de la santé Lausanne (HES-SO Haute école spécialisée de Suisse occidentale).
What is your BRIDGE Proof of Concept project about?
Your application was rejected the first time. What was the impact on your project?
What advice would you give to candidates wishing to develop and implement their social innovation?
To develop a social innovation project that addresses a social need, it is essential to mobilise the knowledge of the stakeholders involved and facing the social need to generate collective intelligence. This technology of participation is in line with the needs and resources of society. Today, social innovation is still under-represented in this type of call for projects! The first challenge in implementing a social project is to effectively communicate with experts from various disciplines. To achieve this, we need to present and justify that our social innovation is the key to our (social) technology, which creates added value and makes a project sustainable, unique and innovative. Players in the social sciences and humanities (in the broadest sense of the term) must seize these opportunities and have a role to play in recognising social innovation as such.
Even if it’s obvious, you have to dare to take the plunge into unknown territory and steps you don’t know perfectly well. It’s part of the rules of entrepreneurship. Even if the project is rejected, the selection process is very instructive, as it allows you to put down in writing all the important dimensions required to implement an idea.