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The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a paradigm shift towards social innovation, which aims to create a more supportive world through collaborative projects involving the public and private sectors. One notable example is Too Good To Go, a Danish startup combating food waste by connecting consumers with restaurants and stores selling surplus food at discounted prices. With millions of users globally and thousands of participating businesses in Spain, the company has leveraged the pandemic to raise awareness and expand its impact. Social innovation also extends into corporate social responsibility, as seen in the Pombo Tokens initiative by a Spanish legal foundation. This project employs blockchain technology to improve access to justice for vulnerable populations, bridging legal, social, and technological innovation for social transformation.
Collaboration is key in social innovation, exemplified by Espacio RES, a startup incubator fostering socially responsible entrepreneurship and economic sustainability. The pandemic has also revived interest in rural revitalization, with initiatives like Repueblo promoting innovation to combat depopulation and create new opportunities in rural Spain. Furthermore, the crisis inspired diverse projects in culture and health, such as online theatre by actors with Down syndrome and volunteer telemedicine services. Long-standing organizations like the NGO It Will Be continue to fight poverty through innovative approaches. Overall, social innovation—both emerging and established—has gained unprecedented importance and potential in addressing societal challenges.
From reducing food waste to facilitating access to justice for the most vulnerable, these projects share innovation in the social sphere as a common denominator.
Along with a paradigm shift in many aspects, the pandemic has also brought with it a series of initiatives that seek to shape a more supportive world, through small and large projects that involve the general population and companies.
This is the case of Too Good To Go, a Danish startup that has little to do with ’emerging’ anymore. It has 33 million users worldwide, of which 2.4 million reside in Spain. Their mission is to reduce food waste and connect consumers with restaurants and stores that sell food they haven’t disposed of at a lower price.
With three years of experience in Spain and more than 6,000 participating establishments, Too Good To Go took advantage of the beginning of the pandemic to promote its work to raise awareness about food waste with various communication actions and projects to make it easy for all its users, buyers and sellers.
Social innovation in the business environment
Social innovation is not just a matter of startups or public sector agents. Private companies also find in it an area of expansion and development, a territory in which to carry out their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) work.
Thus, in 2019 the Fernando Pombo y Gómez-Acebo & Pombo Foundation, focused on the legal field, launched a pioneering initiative in the sector that aims to promote legal innovation projects for social transformation.
It is called Pombo Tokens and develops projects to facilitate access to justice for the most vulnerable people. It is supported by a blockchain solution developed by Blockchain Work Labs, as well as the work of lawyers from the well-known law firm Gómez-Acebo & Pombo.
In this project, Tokens Pombo tries to build bridges between legal, social and technological innovation with a clear purpose: to offer more and better opportunities to the most vulnerable population in terms of fundamental rights.
Collaborative projects and proposals to structure the territory
Social innovation is, in the vast majority of cases, synonymous with collaboration, as these projects cannot be carried out individually. They need the social and solidarity wheel to move forward.
Another example? Espacio RES, an incubator and startup launchpad that focuses on projects with social impact. “We belong to the first Alliance of Impact Accelerators in Spain. At RES we are committed to social entrepreneurship,” they say.
And they add that they are “a space where business projects based on social responsibility and continuous innovation can be developed and promoted, a multidisciplinary community that works collaboratively and moves towards the economic sustainability of its projects in particular and of society in general“.
Among the startups they have promoted, there are some such as Medispenser, an automated storage and dispensing system for medicines, or Love, Martina, a fashion brand that seeks the empowerment of women throughout the life cycle of the product, from the hands that make it to the values that are transmitted to those who wear it.
Because of the pandemic, many considered changing the stress of the city for the peace of the countryside; the small dimensions of large cities, due to the breadth of the rural world. This sentiment shared by many had been brewing for a few years now, but the health crisis has accelerated the process of placing this issue at the centre of public debate.
Proposals such as Repueblo channel that feeling and transform it into a space for innovation. The project is defined as “a think tank of creativity, innovation and development of ideas whose main objective is to turn the rural environment into an attractive place to undertake, create and live“.
Through a series of thematic and itinerant congresses, with venues such as Gredos (Ávila), Andorra (Teruel), Baena (Córdoba) or Trujillo (Cáceres), Repueblo analyzes the possibilities of the rural environment to combat depopulation. Its last call took place in Béjar (Salamanca) from June 25 to 27, delved into the need for reconversion of the region and proposed solutions to generate new opportunities through education, the textile industry and tourism.
From culture to hospital construction
The confinement that much of the globe experienced in the spring of 2020 resulted in the most varied social innovation projects, focused on both culture and health.
The Chilean company Bendito Teatro, made up of actors and actresses with Down syndrome, premiered their play How Chilito Hurts Me via Zoom, with first-person testimonies of what they experienced in those weeks. Thus, the group, which works on disability as a value and creative engine, continued with its work in a very complex time, while innovating in formats and languages by bringing theatre to the online environment.
Another example is that of the Doctors against Covid initiative, developed by volunteer doctors who offered free telemedicine in Spain (through the DKV app ‘I want to take care of myself more’). For its part, the construction materials company Cemex developed a model of mobile hospitals to be built in just 15 days from prefabricated modules.
But social innovation is by no means a recent issue or one that arose from the pandemic. Entities like
Projects for children and women in vulnerable situations are its hallmark, as well as innovation in management, the form of financing, the mode of growth and the use of technological tools that facilitate social work.
From the recently created proposals to those that have been around for years, innovation in the social field is consolidated as a more important value (and with potential) than ever.
