elea Center for Social Innovation
The elea Center for Social Innovation develops and shares research, pedagogical content, and educational programs that help leaders in business, government, and civil society navigate the challenges of initiating and implementing social innovation. We aim to inspire and encourage these leaders to create social innovation in their respective areas of responsibility.
New programs launched, continued involvement in MBA and EMBA
Two new programs were launched by the Center in 2022.
In partnership with the elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalization, in 2022 we launched the custom program Leading for Impact. It brought together more than 30 impact entrepreneurs and elea Foundation team investors to help the entrepreneurs develop their problem-solving and high-performance leadership skills.
“A one-of-a kind program that shifted my mindset and perspective on self-leadership and team leadership.”
Tippi Fernandez, COO, BagoSphere
Our first open program on blended finance and organizational readiness ‘Driving Innovative Finance for Impact’, was launched jointly with the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Economic Forum and the Lombard Odier Foundation.
We also continued our close involvement with the MBA and EMBA programs in 2022. Within the MBA, we supported a team with an International Consulting Project on an investment fund model and ran the online EMBA course “Primer on impact investing and ESG integration”. Center director and dean of the EMBA, Vanina Farber, once again led two immersive Discovery Expeditions to Peru that enabled EMBA participants to explore the social entrepreneurship and impact investment landscape.
A wealth of research, publications and recognition
In 2022, we continued to produce a variety of materials for publication based on the Center’s pioneering research. Two articles were published in a special issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, marking the first time that an FT-50 journal dedicated a collection of papers to the emerging topic of impact investing. Vanina Farber won two case writing awards for her case on pay-as-you-go technology company Angaza: The Case Centre’s 2022 Outstanding Case Writer and EFMD’s 2022 Case Writing Competition for the African Business category. She also won a second EFMD Case Writing Competition 2022 award in the Responsible Leadership category for a case on Nia Impact Capital.
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Book chapters
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Academic articles
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Published cases
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Media articles
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Whitepapers
Fostering Community and Driving Conversation
In 2022, we published a white paper “Impact management: A market analysis of impact objectives and firm policies” in collaboration with NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung – a Swiss, German-language daily newspaper published in Zurich) that surveys the steps that Swiss organizations are taking to integrate sustainability and impact into their organizational capacities. We also created #IMDImpactJobs on LinkedIn to circulate open positions related to social innovation.
Our experts also continued their participation in the E4S action lab on Green Bonds and two research groups: the Swiss Lab for Sustainable Finance and the Gender Lens Initiative for Switzerland.