Guadalupe de la Mata

 Founder and Director of http://planetforchange.org/.

Established in September 2012, Planet for Change is an online platform for collaboration in social innovation.

Planet for Change is an open space where citizens and organisations can share their initiatives and network to prototype, design and test new collaborative models for delivering value through the combination of an online platform and offline events, working groups and communities of practice. The vision is to create a new “Planet”, a Market Place, where citizens and organisations from different sectors are willing to share, engage and develop initiatives and partner with each other to create a better world that is more socially and environmentally sustainable.

Planet for Change’s mission is to promote a collective impact and cross-sector coordination through social innovation approaches to addressing the challenges of today’s society.

In this sense, Planet for Change has the following main objectives:

Increasing awareness and the visibility of social innovation and the role of individuals and organisations as part of the solution to social challenges.

Fostering interaction among actors

Promoting collective actions for social change.

The importance of social innovation lies in its ability to promote new ideas, concepts, strategies and initiatives that can feasibly meet the most urgent and unresolved social and environmental problems that society faces today. Social innovation encompasses thinking and acting differently, and so it encourages people to do things in different ways.

However, this new sector faces several gaps and challenges that need to be resolved. The lack of understanding and scope of social innovation, the overlapping of initiatives and efforts in the sector with huge consequences on its real impact and long-term sustainability, and the lack of integrated knowledge, dialogue and collaboration between actors are the main barriers that have been identified. These challenges drive the proposition of Planet for Change.

The platform rests on four main pillars:

Interactive Map: In order to enhance public awareness of the sector, its actions and activities the platform includes a geographical interactive map that shows the profile of every SI actor willing to open a profile in the platform and to share information about his or her initiatives or projects. This also allows the mapping of existing social innovation actors by country, region and municipality.

Co-Library: Organised as thematic shelves that gather together sets of guides, tools and resources available for any actor looking to start or advance in social innovation.

Co-Talks and Forums and Groups: In order to enable free interaction among actors (both organisations and individuals), the platform is structured as a Social Network where participants can contact each other and create Groups and Forums. Online forum that hosts the possibility for discussion and connects social innovators and individuals interested in the different topics.

LABs for Change: With the aim of enabling and promoting coordination and collaboration through partnerships of those engaged in collective actions, what makes us unique is the possibility of creating a cross-sector (intra and inter) network between the different actors in the social innovation ecosystem, in which partnering is promoted in such a way that it can create innovation. LABS for Change are moderated exclusive spaces for co-working and collaborative thinking, whose expected outcomes range from collaboration to solid partnerships that effectively embody social innovation.

Online Community and the @PlanetforChange, Facebook and Linkedin groups

Management

Guadalupe de la Mata is Founder and Director of http://planetforchange.org/. She is also CEO of the Social Innovation thinktank Innovation for Change, where she gives support to a myriad of social innovation projects in the private and public sectors, and a Partner at HUB Madrid . Guadalupe´s multidisciplinary approach to social innovation is based on her extensive career helping businesses, people and ideas worldwide. Guadalupe has been a Board member of various microfinance banks and worked for more than 15 years leading social innovation, poverty reduction and microfinance projects worldwide as senior employee of international development institutions, such as the European Investment Fund, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank.

Guadalupe has been a visiting professor and tutor for social entrepreneurship projects at several universities for 10 years, including the Instituto de Empresa, Escuela de Organización Industrial and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and a judge at several social entrepreneurship competitions including IE Net Impact Challenge and Young Social Entrepreneur Competition (JES). Her blog www.innovationforsocialchange.org  has become one of the most visited social innovation blogs in Spanish. She is author and co-author of a number of books and articles on social innovation. She speaks five languages, has worked across the globe and is passionate about innovation. Guadalupe is currently on a sabbatical from the EIB.

Key accomplishments (since establishment)

Since its inception in September 2012, Planet for Change has: 1) developed and set up the technical online tools that enable the crowd-mapping and connection of social innovation initiatives. The Interactive Map is now online and around 100 projects have been uploaded, the platform also contains an online community and a Social Innovation Co-Library that contains 200 posts with news, resources, and articles; 2) developed and tested the offline methodologies to promote the creation of partnerships and common and collective action: the LABS for change methodology has been developed and tested with groups from different backgrounds; 3) started creating a community and launching both the online and offline activities. In this sense, the team has interviewed more than 100 social innovators, 20 Labs for Change have been organised with participants from different sectors that have worked together to build joint projects, and eight Co-talks have been organised with participants from ten different countries. We are currently working on the development of several communities of practice and long-term LABS and on expanding the platform to other European countries.