Social Innovation

iFact's Social Innovation Practice assists private companies and public institutions in the development of their social innovation strategy and the design of specific projects to create social impact. An increasing number of business look for new authentic approaches to engage stakeholders with their values, brands and products. Several studies suggest that the development of social innovation practices and projects has a positive impact on several elements of corporate development, such as employee motivation and retention, intrapreneurship, corporate reputation as well as on other outcomes such as sustainability and societal impact. The sum of these outcomes is social impact.

Some of these businesses and organisations want to engage in social innovation beyond the classic corporate social responsibility (CSR) model, but often ignore where to get started. For them, we have developed a methodology to facilitate the creation of a social innovation pilot project. These initiatives are driven by employees wishing to engage in social causes. To increase the impact of these projects, they are aligned with the individual corporate mission and purpose, corporate values and business objectives.

Our extensive knowledge of both sides, corporate culture and non-profit thinking, allows us to guide our clients in the generation and selection of project ideas as well as to act as an intermediary, when it comes to setting up partnerships and collaboration between for-profit and non-profit entities.

Thanks to our understanding of various technologies, our team and partners can also assist in the selection of collaboration and communication tools to make this process as efficient and productive as possible. Because what really counts at the end of the day is the achievement of concrete results evidenced by the social impact on individuals and the community, by having all participants working together on the same goals, along the way.

Experts

Sabine Kerner
Partner
Montreal, Canada

 

Sabine Kerner, founder of iFact, has extensive experience of international marketing, sales and consulting acquired with international firms such as Apple Computer in California and Lotus Development in Germany.

 

She successfully assists our clients in developing and implementing cost-effective strategies for entering new markets. She  negotiated distribution and co-development agreements and ran international marketing campaigns.

 

Ms Kerner is also a well-known conference speaker at events on international business development, marketing and sales organized by the Information Technology Association Canada (ITAC), the Centre d’entreprises et d’innovation de Montréal (CEIM), the Association en recherche et développement industriel du Québec (ADRIQ), and the Ministère de développement économique et innovation (MEI).

She is an accredited expert at ADRIQ, providing coaching and corporate development assistance for technology firms. 

Based in Montreal, Canada, Sabine holds a Diplom-Kaufmann (MBA) from the Technical University, Berlin.