How to measure the impact for startups of the Social Innovation Tournament, the flagship event of the EIB Institute? Master’s students from five business schools (Católica Lisbon, Aston University, Maastricht University, Norwegian Business School and Mannheim University) took on this task as part of a Global Innovation Challenge.

The SIT provided beneficial impact throughout its social and its human resources, the students found out through a survey of all SIT Alumni. The resources provided by the SIT perfectly match the SIT activities which define entrepreneurial success, be it for human capital (training and mentoring), for social capital (networking and collaboration) or for financial capital (prizes).

However the tournament did not financially impact the participants as much as expected and the SIT’s financial impact could be enhanced in the future, for instance by providing more funding or more ‘SITolarships’, a recently implemented form of small and targeted grants.

The Global Innovation Challenge, where students working in a multi-cultural team have to solve a real-life company challenge, was created by eight business schools, five from Europe; Católica Lisbon, Aston University (UK), Maastricht University, Norwegian Business School, University of Mannheim, and three from the rest of the world; College of Commerce at National Chengchi University (NCCUC-Taiwan), QUT Business School (Australia), University of Stellenbosch (South Africa).