Social Innovation Factory (SIF)

The Social Innovation Factory is the Belgian accelerator for social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Our long term goal is to create a society in which all kind of actors can contribute to the wellbeing of society and our planet. To reach this goal, the Social Innovation Factory raises awareness of social innovation and social entrepreneurship, and enables actors to tackle challenges in a socially innovative and entrepreneurial way.

We are a non-profit organisation established in 2013 by a mix of private companies and civil society organisations.

We welcome people working on any relevant societal issue such as sustainability, green energy, healthy food, poverty alleviation, well-being, education, ageing or a combination of different issues. We reach out to a broad variety of actors, since we believe in the power of cross-fertilisation between civil society organisations, enterprises, government actors and academia.

Our services and actions relate to three important needs of social innovators and social entrepreneurs : the need to access people, knowledge and funding.

Objectives:

  • To raise awareness and understanding of social innovation and social entrepreneurship across civil society, business, government and academia.

  • To empower actors with new solutions (methodologies, services, products and partnerships) for tackling complex societal challenges.

  • To provide innovators and entrepreneurs with access to the right people, knowledge and funding to bring their socially-innovative ideas into reality.

  • To foster collaborative, cross-sectoral and boundary-breaking practices, enabling collective learning and co-creation of impact.

  • To cultivate a vibrant, inclusive ecosystem where all stakeholders can contribute to the well-being of society and help shape systemic change.

Main activities:

  • Personal and group coaching of 100+ social innovators per year, from starters to (international) scalers.
  • Operating as a network organization promoting and strengthening the social entrepreneurship ecosystem and connecting social entrepreneurs with government, investors, industry and experts trough network- and matchmaking events and a cross-reference approach.
  • Development of a National Competence Centre for Social Innovation.
  • Introducing Impact Track in Belgium, a holistic tool for impact measuring and monitoring.
  • Radicale Vernieuwers. This campaign that we run every two years is a large scale search – with broad media coverage – to identify radical innovations for a better world.

General Information: