The European Social Innovation Campus (ESIC) is a four-year research and innovation initiative (2023–2027) that aims to transform how we educate and equip Europe’s social innovators. As the demands of leadership, entrepreneurship, and civic engagement evolve, so too must education. The ESIC project is delivering the insights, tools, and frameworks needed to ensure that education across Europe is fit for purpose in a time of green and digital transitions.
At the core of this initiative is a robust evidence base built from thousands of academic sources, hundreds of stakeholder interviews, and input from institutions and organisations across nine European countries.
🔍 A Comprehensive Research Approach
To understand the current landscape and future needs of social innovation education, ESIC has undertaken an ambitious and layered research strategy:
📚 1. Systematic Literature Review
From an initial pool of over 36,000 academic publications, the ESIC team selected 154 high-quality articles from leading journals for in-depth analysis. This research formed the basis of a new Social Innovation Competency Framework, guiding future-oriented curriculum development across sectors.
🎙️ 2. Interviews and Focus Groups
In collaboration with 15 ESIC partners, we conducted 69 interviews and 34 focus groups across Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Romania, Spain, and Ukraine. A total of 289 stakeholders contributed, including:
- Entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs
- Social enterprise managers
- Government officials and policymakers
- Researchers, educators, and coaches
- Funders and support network leaders
Their insights helped shape our understanding of emerging pedagogies, stakeholder roles, and the educational gaps that must be addressed to support innovation with social purpose.
📊 3. September 2025 Survey Launch
We have launched our first Europe-wide survey targeting practitioners, teachers, and students. This survey is designed to identify mismatches between expected, taught, and delivered competencies in social innovation education — helping educators tailor programmes that better meet the needs of learners and society.
We are deeply grateful to the national research committees in each participating country. Their guidance, recruitment support, and feedback were crucial to the integrity and relevance of our data collection.
🧠 Rethinking Job Roles and Frameworks
Contrary to what some may expect, the research revealed no need for brand new job titles. Instead, the findings recommend adapting existing roles within the ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) database to reflect the unique social dimensions of innovation.
The language and frameworks commonly used in commercial or tech-driven innovation contexts often fail to resonate in the social economy. The ESIC team calls for updated, values-aligned terminology and competency mapping that reflects the realities of social innovation practice.
📘 Skills Monitor: Mapping the Actors in Social Innovation
The second ESIC Skills Monitor report focuses on a critical insight: social innovation is not the work of social entrepreneurs alone. A wide array of stakeholders play vital roles in enabling change — and they all require appropriate education and training.
The report identifies ten stakeholder profiles that contribute to social innovation in distinct ways:
- Citizens
- For-profit businesses
- Government actors
- Involved employees
- Non-governmental funding organisations
- Schools
- Social economy organisations
- Social innovation managers
- Support organisations
- Universities
For each group, the report outlines their specific contributions and the types of competencies they need to effectively participate in social innovation processes.
📗 Report Series: Future Skills for Social Innovation
To help translate research into action, ESIC has also released a two-part, practice-oriented report series for educators, funders, and ecosystem leaders:
🔹 Future-Ready Skills for Social Innovation
A pragmatic competency framework highlighting key skills — from systems thinking to empathy-driven leadership— and how to embed them in curricula.
🔹 Redesigning Business Education for Impact
A call to action for higher education institutions to move beyond traditional pedagogies, overcome institutional inertia, and support experiential, purpose-driven learning.
💡 Key Takeaways
- Social innovation education must combine transversal (core) and specialised (contextual) competencies.
- Emerging pedagogies such as hackathons, living labs, and community-based learning are vital to delivering real-world impact.
- Institutional change is essential: universities and training providers must foster an environment of experimentation, innovation, and cross-sector collaboration.
📣 A Call to Action
This initiative is more than a research project — it’s a movement to build a resilient, inclusive, and future-ready workforce for Europe’s social economy.
Whether you are a teacher, policymaker, entrepreneur, researcher, or civic leader, you have a role to play in shaping the next generation of changemakers — not just for success, but for significance.
Stay connected with ESIC and the EU Pact for Skills for tools, resources, and collaborative opportunities to help drive this transformation.
📌 Visit our Skills Monitor reports section for the latest insights.
📖 Watch for our upcoming peer-reviewed academic publications in leading journals.
