Driving Change Through Social Innovation
We work with communities, organisations, and policymakers to co-create inclusive, lasting solutions for environmental and social challenges through participatory innovation.
Building Resilient Communities for a Sustainable Future
At WE&B, we foster collaboration between citizens, businesses, and institutions to drive meaningful change. By integrating social dynamics into environmental strategies, we create adaptive and community-driven solutions that promote equity, sustainability, and long-term resilience.
WE&B’s definition of Social Innovation is:
“Social Innovation finds novel approaches to meet social needs and to generate the behavioural changes required to adress environmental challenges. With social innovation, at WE&B, we aim to empower citizens and generate new social relations or models of collaboration to foster resilience and systemic change”
Technological innovation alone is insufficient to tackle the challenges related to the environment and climate change with a greater focus required on research, policy and bottom-up innovation (Bergman et al 2010).
WE&B addresses the multifaceted dimensions concerning human development and well-being through the social and environmental sciences approach, providing social innovation to the environmental challenges.
“… The development and implementation of new ideas (products, services and models) to meet social needs and create new social relationships or collaborations. It represents new responses to pressing social demands, which affect the process of social interactions. It is aimed at improving human wellbeing. Social innovations are innovations that are social in both their ends and their means. They are innovations that are not only good for society but also enhance individuals’ capacity to act.” (European Commission, 2013:6 [2])
Innovative Solutions for Social and Environmental Impact
We design and implement participatory strategies that empower communities, foster collaboration, and drive sustainable change—ensuring lasting impact at social, economic, and environmental levels.
WE&B provides social innovation through 5 concrete services:
Socio-Environmental Contextual Analysis
Understanding the rational basis of environmental problems forms the grounding of WE&B’s social innovation services. By means of applied sociological research techniques, we gain first-hand knowledge of the social realities and the specific context of each environmental problem.
Service Product
We provide socio-environmental analytical models for the analysis of attitudes, opinions or behaviour in relation to specific environmental challenges.
The results of this analyses provide the baseline from which the other WE&B social services can be derived. Depending on the requirement and each specific situation, we apply multi-strategic social research approaches, which combine techniques such as:
- Qualitative approaches using in-depth interviews, discussion groups or participatory interventions, and analysing their insights through content analysis, ethnographic studies, etc..
- Quantitative approaches using existing secondary social databases, or the implementation of social samples.
- Other mixed methods: fuzzy cognitive mapping, thematic analysis, etc.
Through these approaches WE&B has been able to implement and adapt different sociological theoretical perspectives through various projects. We have implemented the Theory of Planned Behaviour to understand knowledge fragmentation in water and climate change in Africa – AfriAlliance project. We have performed Ethnographic Techniques to understand the reasoning for water and nutrient reuse acceptance in circular economy solutions – in the RUN4LIFE project. We have gained an understanding of the risk/benefit perceptions of implementing circular solutions in buildings – the Houseful project. Understanding a social application of water smart society in the REWAISE project, knowing how the innovation sector works in the nutrient management sector in Europe, (Nutri-know project).
Stakeholder Analysis and Mapping
How to leverage the power of your network? Are you aware of which organisation, department, community, working group, project or individual holds the most information? Which of these has the greatest influence over the flow of information or indeed how these groups collaborate (or not) together?
Service Product
We will provide you with a detailed report on the insights into the stakeholder connections within your department, community, organisation or sector. The report will provide a reflexion on your current network situation, it will provide a stakeholder database through a social structure analysis. The report will include a networking map with sleek visualization to easily view the stakeholder connections. The report can also provide you, through a deepening step, with a qualitative analysis of the stakeholder structure, providing insights and recommendations to where you may need to work to improve collaborations.
WE&B can analyse your own stakeholder data or build it up together from scratch to provide a practical and measurable approach to solving problems and providing solutions to better understand and to visualise the collaboration levels, the relationships and/or flow of information.
The WE&B Social Network Analysis (SNA) service will support the understanding of who the key stakeholders are for you, clarify their roles, determine how and when they should be engaged.
Through this analysis the WE&B team – with years of SNA experience across various sectors and disciplines – will shine a light on the levels of collaboration between groups and provide recommendations to transform them into efficient management systems.
The Benefits of the WE&B SNA Service
We will provide you with an analytical report with eye-catching visualisations to provide you with critical insights. Our recommendations will enable your organisation to attain growth, new acquisition, customer retention and improve business and project organisational processes.
Concretely our service will:
- Provide a better view of your network /groups and systematise the way of managing your database based on SNA.
- Our insights will support your thinking about who is relevant within the network with metrics that will provide the basis to improve collaboration.
- Help your organisation to plan, monitor, control projects, activities, people and organisations.
- Coupled with information from different departments, working groups/ communities of practice, the WE&B SNA service will provide deep insight into the collaboration (bridges and bottlenecks); resource efficiency and information flow between these different “communities”.
Taking WE&B SNA Service further.
Using the insights and analysis from the SNA, WE&B can overlay a stakeholder network map together with fuzzy cognitive mapping. This ability provides a deeper analysis of various systems. For example, the interplay and interaction between human and environmental systems.
The following provides a graphical overview of the steps in the WE&B SNA Service
Environmental Systemic Monitoring and Evaluation
How can you measure your social impact when tackling environmental challenges? To what extent are you improving the lives of those affected by environmental problems?
This is the question that drives WE&B in the service to evaluate and assess the contexts of social progress and impact where environmental problems exist.
Service Product
WE&B will evaluate and assess progress in relation to a particular environmental and social challenge. A bespoke indicator system will be implemented in order to holistically monitor and evaluate the social, environmental, economic and governance progression to solving the environmental or social challenge. The professional report will provide insights and analysis of the human-environment systems, with a set of monitoring and evaluation indicators and a methodology and recommendations for the collection and monitoring of these systemic indicators.
Through the project experience and the expertise from the WE&B team, we can create specific socio-environmental indicator systems (social, economic, environmental, governance). These indicator systems address the variety of social determinants that environmental challenges require if they are to be solved. Our adapted social indicator systems include: (i) contextual indicators (eg. OECD indicators, SDGs indicators, etc.), (ii) reference indicators at a specific regional level and (iii) monitoring and impact indicators at local level. WE&B has provided socio- environmental contextual analysis for projects such as LIFEDREAMER, REWAISE, UNIDO, HOUSEFUL, RUN4LIFE, BRAINYMEM.
Effective Engagement & Open Innovation
As a society we have come to realise that the involvement of all relevant people in the decision-making process is critical. Only then can the research and political decisions be potentially accepted through continued engagement.
Service Product
WE&B will provide the design, process, methodology and the implementation of effective engagement strategies. WE&B will provide a roadmap for implementing engagement processes sustainably. This service also ensures the creation of a social footprint for the long-term engagement of the relevant stakeholders in providing solutions around environmental challenges.
WE&B develops and implements engagement processes based on our principles of social innovation and effective engagement. Through a prior social analysis (part of Service 1), participation strategies and mechanisms are fully adapted to the given social context and issues. Our methodology is dynamic because society is ever-changing in terms of its needs, interest and challenges.
How does WE&B engage with society?
WE&B designs, develops, launches and manages a collective approach to the engagement process, including online to offline mechanisms. Examples of the approaches used in establishing working groups are: Communities of Practice (COP); Action Groups; Living Labs and Competency Groups.
Our experience ranges from setting up and managing 10 Action Groups across Africa for water and climate actions over a 5-year period through the AfriAlliance project. In Houseful, we have developed and implemented the service for co-creation of circular solutions in the housing sector in 4 regions of 2 European countries.
WE&B has extensive experience working with the quintuple helix stakeholders (academia, business, policy, society and environment dimensions). We have worked on bringing together all needs and interests in environmental challenges from indigenous groups, women’s groups, youth groups, civil society organisations, national authorities, local authorities, media, funding organisations, businesses, research professionals and high-level decision-makers.
Through the years, WE&B has accumulated skills related to different stakeholder engagement strategies. Therefore, we have the expertise and relevant experience to bring these engagement strategies to a practical implementation level.
Knowledge Exchange & Communication
Knowledge exchange is highly required in an expanding field of innovation and research that has ever growing audiences with varying needs. However, a gap between scientific knowledge generation and non-scientific, societal application and practice still remains (Ballantyne, A.G., 2018).
Service Product
WE&B can provide tailored environmental Knowledge Exchange and Communication Plans and strategies with the required indicators and messages for various audiences. Examples of communication materials developed to implement the communication plans with adequate tailored messages include:
- Communication Strategies
- Embedding RRI approach and open innovation in research and innovation projects
- Different sort of publications:
- Policy briefs
- White papers
- Factsheets
- Layman’s reports
- Case study social profiles
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is an embracing focus that entails engaging all actors (from individual researchers and innovators to institutions and governments) through inclusive, participatory methodologies in all stages of Research and Innovation processes.
The Knowledge Exchange service from WE&B fills this gap between science and practice and provides the inputs to RRI implementation.
WE&B has developed a Communication and Awareness Action Plan and produced communication materials to engage the private (industry), public (authorities) and civil society sectors in coastal zone management in West Africa – WACA project. WE&B has also identified the needs and gaps of climate change awareness amongst the policy makers and government ministries in Jamaica – Jamaica project. WE&B has implemented the RRI approach in European projects – REWAISE project. WE&B has also provided communication and dissemination strategies for research projects, ensuring that the research outputs reach their target audiences with clear, concise messages with examples from the AfriAlliance project.
