Transnational Network for Social Innovation Incubation

Transnational Network for Social Innovation Incubation – TRANSITION – is a 30-month project that supports the scaling-up of social innovations across Europe by developing a network of incubators which brings together established partners within the fields of social innovation (SI) and innovation-based incubation (IBI). TRANSITION will also provide learning output on which scaling methodologies are most effective in a given region and the level of impact of these methodologies when transferred between regions.

TRANSITION is coordinated by EBN, Europe’s network of innovation-based incubators. Partners in the consortium are all pioneers in social innovation and incubation, and provide a broad geographical spread for six Scaling Centres:

• France – Paris Region Enterprise (PRE)
• Ireland – WestBIC
• Italy – Politecnico Milano
• Portugal - Social Entrepreneurs Agency (SEA)
• Spain – Social Innovation Park (SIP)
• UK – The Young Foundation

Nesta and The Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) complete the consortium to ensure that a diversity of approaches to, and methodologies for social innovation and innovation-based incubation will be tested, analysed and shared.

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TRANSITION has recently launched ESIIN network. Join us: www.esiin.eu

Project Outputs

TRANSITION will identify a pool of 300 SIs with the potential for scaling. This sourcing phase will combine 6 widely-promoted 1-day Spark Sessions, with local searches by partners using their own extended networks. From the pool, selected SIs will be given support within the Scaling Centres covering design, financial, legal, social impact value & enhancement, & business coaching to help them scale nationally & internationally. If appropriate, SIs will be passed between Scaling Centres during this process. For example, an Italian SI may find opportunities to work in UK and the two Scaling Centres will jointly provide co-incubation support for the transition.

A further strand of activity will develop a Transnational Start-ups Lab to rapidly take social innovations at the ideas stage all the way through to international implementation within the time scale of the project. It is expected that a small number of SIs identified at sourcing will benefit from such an action, and it provides a further methodology for analysis.

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