The Intellectual Workshop “The Role of Academic Science in Social Innovations and Social Entrepreneurship” supported by the Swedish Institute will be held in the Vadym Hetman Kyiv National Economic University / Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman on January 26-27, 2016.

University lecturers, young researches, students, NGO representatives, practitioners in the fields of sustainable development, social innovations, and social entrepreneurship are invited to participate in the event.

The main goal of the workshop is to exchange ideas, achievements in the investigation and implementation of sustainable development concepts, social innovations, and to establish new contacts among the participants.

The working language of the workshop is English.

Intellectual workshop topics:
January 26: “Innovations, Sustainability, and Regulations”
January 27: “The Role of Academic Science in Social Innovations and Social Entrepreneurship”

Key speakers:

Fredrik Björk, lecturer in Social Innovation and Environmental Science at the Department for Urban Studies, Malmö University. Locally, he is also engaged as a board member of Yalla Trappan, a social enterprise, and the Center for Public Entrepreneurship, a third sector initiative to support civic entrepreneurial initiatives in the region on Skåne. In 2014 Björk was part of the team that developed an Agenda for an ecosystem for social innovation in Sweden, an initiative financed by VINNOVA, the Swedish government’s innovation agency. Right now the team is working on different routes to translate the agenda into action.

Tom Nilsson, Ph.d. in Political Scince, Malmö University, Sweden. Research Interests: policy studies, democratic theory, public administration, international relations, local politics, political participation.

Detailed information about the event will be shortly posted on the website “Educational Trends” (www.edu-trends.info).

Participation in the workshop is free.

If you intend to participate in the event, please, send a short message to vsatsik@gmail.com (Сацик Володимир).
We will be happy to treat you to coffee and tasty cookies.

January 26: “Innovations, Sustainability, and Regulations”

Arguably, ’sustainability’ is today one of the most important concepts in international politics. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are supposed to guide national as well as international policy for the coming years are just one example of this. The challenges - social as well as environmental - are enormous. At the same time, ’innovation’ has evolved as an important strategy to create a more sustainable world. The topic of today’s seminar is how regulations and institutions can enable and facilitate innovations processes that increase sustainability.

January 27: “The Role of Academic Science in Social Innovations and Social Entrepreneurship”

During the last 15 years, the interest in social entrepreneurship and social innovation as strategies to meet challenges in society has grown continuously all over the world. The drivers of this process has largely been social entrepreneurs themselves, but Universities were quick to pick up on this. Today, there is an abundance of research and development projects, courses and programs on different levels as well as different institutional arrangements, such as incubators and knowledge centers. It can be argued that this can be seen as an example of Universities pushing beyond traditional roles of teaching and research towards taking a more active role in society, especially building on cross-sector collaborations.