The context:

There is no shortage of good ideas and innovation around the world. The challenge is helping the good ideas grow – how can we help these great ideas have an impact on larger numbers of citizens? There is also an abundance of organisation which are designed to support the scaling of good ideas but there are several different approaches, some more suitable for certain types of innovations than others. In order to scale effectively and achieve the maximum impact, we need to collaborate better.

About the Session:

Impact Hub Kings’s Cross will host an evening panel that will showcase social innovations that are scaling within the UK and internationally and how we can learn and better collaborate from others. The conversation will focus in particular on the different approaches to scaling, how we can learn from these approaches, the different needs that various types of social innovations need when scaling and the different types of support offered by actors within different sectors.

Why you should attend:

This session will be helpful if you are interested in either supporting scaling, or being scaled yourself.

Session hosts and collaborators:

– Alberto Masetti-Zanni, Development Director at the Impact Hub Kings Cross

– James Whitehead, Global Innovation Adviser at Oxfam

– Dan Berelowitz, Chief Executive and Co-Founder, ICSF

– Mike Freeman, Programme Manager, Business in the Community, ARC Programme

– Madeleine Gabriel, Principal Researcher, Nesta (author of report Making it Big on scaling social ventures)

– David Seddon, Portfolio Director, Social Business Trust

About the hosts:

Located just steps away from King’s Cross station, Impact Hub King’s Cross is a unique ecosystem of resources, inspiration, and collaboration opportunities that support a more sustainable world. The Impact Hub London community is made up of social businesses addressing challenges both locally and globally. Our members are entrepreneurs, social investors, freelancers, advocates, campaigners, creatives, artists, consultants, coaches and more. Impact Hub King’s Cross is part of a global network of connected communities that enable collaborative ventures. Impact Hubs unite people from every profession, background and culture with imagination and drive to pursue enterprising ideas for the world. These are the people who see and do things differently and have entrepreneurial passion to create sustainable impact.

About the Unusual Suspects Festival:

The Unusual Suspects Festival is a four-day festival that will blend international expertise and innovation with local thinking and practice from across the UK and feature a collection of interlinked events that will draw out the ways in which collaboration and social innovation can work in sync and ask how this can help address some of the most difficult issues we face in society today. The Festival will take place in London during September 2-5, 2014 and is curated by the Social Innovation Exchange, Collaborate and The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. For more information on the Festival including the events on offer, please see our website.