Laura Orestano
As Vice-President of SocialFare SEED, Laura Orestano plays a pivotal role in fostering social innovation and impact investing. As the founder of this ecosystem, Laura provides a clear vision and interpretation of what social innovation is and how it may evolve in the future. Her work focuses on developing impact investing research and scenarios that guide the capital allocation strategy of SocialFare SEED. By aligning vision, operations, and venture capital allocation for impactful outcomes, Laura strives to create consistency and drive meaningful change in the field of social innovation.
Addressing Key Gaps in Impact-Driven Innovation
In my view, there are mainly two gaps:
1. Startup side, there is still a blurred interpretation of impact whereas a more radical and intentional innovation should be posed to reinforce a truly impact-driven endeavour: no compromises, no impact-washing but true intentionality to act to tackle key societal challenges via new and scalable business models.
2. Investor side, capital is allocated within a quite traditional financial framework, i.e. it is venture capital but the investor’s approach stays conservative while more courage and also more innovative metrics and indicators would help investors and investees build a true alternative to the status quo, which is in the end the greatest challenge and impact we can build together combining capital and innovation as a force for good.
Building Resilience through Mission Alignment
The most resilient ventures are those with consistent mission alignment: this does not mean they are stubborn or unable to adapt, but rather that they have a deep understanding of their purpose and a strong commitment to their "why" and "how." Passion, courage, and the ability to overcome limitations through new competencies are key to navigating the challenges ahead.
“Passion, courage and the ability to overcome limitations through new competencies are key to navigating the challenges ahead.”
Social Innovation in Europe has evolved a lot and I would say, almost each member country has now its social innovation/social economy policies and actions, and quite good innovations have been deployed also in quite wide hybrid partnerships. The next level is, in my view, to make social innovation and social economy become the future blueprint for a more inclusive, sustainable, and peaceful Europe.
Social Innovation has triggered creativity, new models, new solutions and behaviours and we need that attractiveness to be relaunched to shape a kind of European Social Renaissance, a new continent where policies and actions dwell on diversity and inclusion, foster peace as a continuous process, and place people and environmental well-being as an “equality platform” across the countries.
I would certainly encourage them to join in: impact entrepreneurship is not only a way to deliver intentional innovation for social good, there is capital that needs to be re-shaped, research to be re-designed, skills to be upgraded, policies to be lobbied for. Being an impact entrepreneur today means to be pioneers of the future and that is good for the market as well.
