Enterprise 2020 Conference, 27 April 2012

CSR Europe's Enterprise 2020 conference, was hosted by Solvay in Brussels on the 27th April 2012. The conference showcased a range of key note speakers on the topic of social innovation as a lever for growth and sustainability.

Around 200 participants had the opportunity to:

Gain some practical examples of how companies have embraced social innovation as a successful business strategy
Discover the common ‘red threads’ and how collaboration can help scale up their impact
Engage in dialogue with company and EU representatives on societal trends, environmental priorities and the European CSR agenda to find cooperation opportunities

Download a full programme here: Enterprise 2020 Conference Programme. All presentations, written and video speeches can be found below:

Part I: Innovation for sustainability

The purpose of this plenary session was to outline the expectations of the European Commission and explore how business and their industry sectors need to review their business models and work with social entrepreneurs to tackle existing and emerging sustainability issues. Speakers included:

Weclome speech and introduction, Christian Jourquin, CEO Solvay, (Video of speech available here)

Enterprise 2020: driving effective social innovation, Etienne Davignon, Minister of State, President of CSR Europe, (Video of speech available here)

Innovation for Sustainability and social entrepreneurship:

Geoff Mulgan, Chief Exeuctive of NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, UK) (download presentation, Video available here)
and Sue Riddlestone, Executive Director & Co-Founder of RioRegional, Co-Director of One Planet & M.D. of BioRegional MiniMills Ltd (download presentation, Video available here)

Part II: Isolated Innovation to Systemic Change - Identifying the red thread(s)

The purpose of this session was to discover how businesses – through different forms of collaboration and specific technological innovations - are actually changing their business models. This session focused on the common lessons learned and identify the ways to bring about or sustain such a change inside large companies. Panelists included:

Laura Crow, Sustainability Analyst, Vodafone, download presentation
Federico Caleno, Network Technologies Development responsible, ENEL, download presentation
Ray Pinto, Senior Government Affairs Manager, Microsoft, download presentation
Sandra Grieden, Brand and Communication, download presentation
Moderator: Bruno Berthon, Global Managing Director, Accenture Sustainability Services

This panel discussion was followed by a speech by Richard Howitt, Member of the European Parliament (UK) and Rapporteur on CSR. Read speech (Video available here)

Part III: Igniting new ways of thinking & collaborating through CSR Europe’

Part three consisted of three breakout sessions which allowed participants to explore opportunities and identify potential future collaborative projects against the background of

Social inclusion and workforce solutions for growth: Innovative collaborations with business to support better skills, more jobs and new entrepreneurs.
Smart living in cities and rural areas: Achieving large-scale positive impact in cities and communities across the globe. Download presentation.
Sustainable business performance: Discuss the challenges, solutions and opportunities towards sustainable business performance in an interdependent economy. Download presentation.

Interactive workshop minutes available here.