New project to boost social innovation and sustainability amongst regional SMEs
MMTC is collaborating with Coompanion Jönköpings Län in a project aimed at helping local businesses implement social innovation into their organisations. As part of the project, researchers at the Media, Management and Transformation Centre will carry out research into local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to find out what activities they are already doing and what support they need to continue working with social innovation.
This project builds on the fist Siru projet conducted between 2016-2020, also in collaboration with the business development association Coompanion Jönköpings län which focussed on creating awareness of social innovation and how it can benefit the Jönköping region. Now MMTC is taking part once more in the follow-up project, SIRU 2.0, which aims to help regional businesses implement social innovation activities.
“People are used to looking to big corporations for large-scale examples of social innovation, but good things are also happening on a smaller scale, for example, a small village woodworking business that is providing sawdust waste to another company to use as fuel, or a company that’s taking new steps to diversify their workforce. When you add all these small innovations together, it can have a big impact,” says Duncan Levinsohn.
Helping small businesses engage in sustainability is something that JIBS is already committed to. In Autumn 2021, the school is also launching three courses: Accelerating a Sustainability Transition, Sustainability for SMEs (given in Swedish), and Sustainability and ownership – all three aimed at helping business practitioners and family business owners increase sustainability in their companies.
“We want to make Jönköping the most sustainable region in Sweden, and in turn make Sweden a bigger player globally. We cannot rely on the Swedish public sector alone to achieve this. Small businesses play a big part in society, so it’s crucial we get them involved,” concludes Duncan Levinsohn.
SIRU 2.0 was launched in January 2021 and will be running until April 2023. The project is part of a larger theme within MMTC on Sustainability. Also engaged in this project are MMTC members, Leona Achtenhagen, Guénola Nonet and Mark Edwards.
For more information, please contact Duncan Levinsohn.
