The Weaver
Michael Hagelmüller studied international business in Austria and Italy, where he specialised in socially and ecologically sustainable business models. He obtained his master’s degree in “wellbeing in public policy” at the University of Bath in the UK, where he focused on policy structures that enable thriving societies. After working in the business sector, he joined the Austrian ministry of labour and social affairs to help set up the first Social Impact Bond in Austria. At Ashoka he already led two campaigns to support young social entrepreneurs and is currently leading Ashoka Austria’s multistakeholder work in education with “Bildünger”. Bildünger aims to support changemakers in education to respond to the pressing challenges of the 21st century.
Problem and Context
Goals
- Identify: Through an open innovation crowdsourcing process helped by an online platform and a 4 month education visioning tour through Austria together with regional network partners, identify change leaders all over Austria (school principals, teachers, students, policymakers, entrepreneurs etc.).
- Enable: Through a large matchmaking conference, Innovation Steam brings all change leaders together and selects the most impactful ones for the education accelerator program. This program provides the backbone for 30 change leaders to co-create collective impact of their individual ventures.
- Institutionalise: Innovation Steam closely works with system actors to anchor the outcome of the accelerator into the formal system: the accelerator program is to be conceived as a training course in order to develop a prototype, which can be offered by an established teacher training institution.
Traction
- Since February, Innovation Steam has co-created an education accelerator together with all Austrian education fellows (Johannes Lindner, Bernhard Hofer, Gerald Koller) as well as with German/international fellows scaling to Austria (Wendy Kopp/Teach for Austria, Margret Rasfeld/Schule im Aufbruch). Constant feedback meetings enabled them to iterate the accelerator already in line with the co-lead partners. Additionally, Innovation Steam had feedback meetings on the project with 20+ education stakeholders from their network (foundations, ministries, welfare organisations etc.).
- Innovation Steam is about to enter a collaboration with the Austrian “innovation foundation for education”, a public foundation with an endowment of € 50 Mio. and carried by the 4 ministries (social affairs, education, economy, science) that is aimed at funding innovations in education. Their vision is totally in line with EACH and they offer vital contacts to anchor our accelerator in the formal education system. In close collaboration our accelerator will build up the ecosystem for those €50 Mio. to go to educational change leaders that work towards empowering young people to be changemakers.
- Together with all major Austrian foundations, Innovation Steam is developing a partnership with the innovation foundation in order to mobilise further private capital for educational change leaders.
- Mavens like Gerald Hüther, acknowledged brain scientist and educational expert, are engaged as a mentor for the constant iteration of the accelerator.
- Innovation Steam is currently developing an online platform with the hylo-technology to support the mobilisation of this community of change leaders digitally.
- Innovation Steam has “field-tested” their process with their “migration accelerator” in the last year and are now transferring the model into education with our education accelerator. All of the defining elements have already been part of the migration accelerator as prototypes. Here are some key facts about the migration accelerator:
- 10 social entrepreneurs with Ashoka fellow potential in an structured scaling program, involving fellows, social intrapreneurs from welfare organizations, companies and the public administration
- 150+ people engaged in the accelerator as participants (social entrepreneurs), coaches, workshop facilitators, mentors, legal experts etc.
- 320+ people on the matchmaking conference
- 200+ support pledges on the matchmaking conference for the 15 participating social entrepreneurs.
How Weaving Helps
