The take up of innovative services and products has contributed to creative thinking also in terms of new sources of financing. Innovation processes are characterised by constant development, and it is beneficial if models of financing can be aligned to that. Crowdfunding, i.e. collecting finance from publics, has emerged as a new alternative also in the field of sustainable innovation.

This CASI project policy brief looks how crowdfunding relates to EU innovation funding activities (Tregner-Mlinaric, Repo & Matschoss 2015). It introduces crowdfunding as an activity, discusses it in sustainable innovation and argues that the European Commission should enhance its approach to consider crowdfunding as an alternative source of finance for innovation.

You may access the policy brief on crowdfunding and sustainable innovation through this link.

The project “Public Participation in Developing a Common Framework for Assessment and Management of Sustainable Innovation” (CASI) is proposed as a response to one of the Grand Challenges set out in the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union, namely “Climate action, environment resource efficiency and raw materials”.

It represents an EU-wide cross-sectoral partnership on innovation-related challenges and considers not only the impacts of social and technological innovation, but also the types of actors involved and their inherent interests. It thus effectively integrates the perspectives of civil society, SMEs, industry, policy stakeholders, and leading academics.

This collaboration investigates the scope of sustainable innovation as a societal phenomenon and enables the elaboration of an assessment framework of sustainable innovation practices, whose application can be successfully integrated into public policy developments.