In the spring of 2024, Malmö University established a Societal Impact Lab in close collaboration with Forum for Social Innovation Sweden Mau Holding, and in partnership with Swedbank’s Skåne Endowment Foundation. The Lab is a one-year idea development program aimed at transforming research at Malmö University into sustainable, long-term societal benefits to address societal challenges.
– The lab provides support to researchers who want to solve societal challenges, driven by a desire to contribute to social change. Social entrepreneurs need a different kind of support and different skills. These types of ideas often lack a natural growth logic. They require different types of financing and business models. The difference also lies in how impact is measured, which isn’t solely about financial results, explains Charlotte Ahlgren Moritz, ViceVice President for Collaboration and Innovation at Malmö University and Chair of the national steering committee for Forum for Social Innovation Sweden.
Malmö University’s Societal Impact Lab is funded by a donation, in part from Swedbank’s Skåne Endowment Foundation. The work will be led by Mau Innovation, which supports researchers in commercialization and innovation processes.
“The application of research is important for ensuring that scientific findings are actually put into practice to benefit society as a whole. It is also a way to attract research funding that supports excellent research addressing the challenges of today and tomorrow,” says Charlotte Ahlgren Moritz.
The lab will launch its first program in the fall of 2024. The five researchers who will participate in the lab’s first year have now been selected. The multidisciplinary lab brings together researchers from five different institutions, whose research findings address key societal challenges. The lab will serve as a catalyst for developing and concretizing research findings with the goal of transforming them into sustainable and implementable methods, processes, and services that can be integrated and applied in society.
The Societal Impact Lab (SIL) was inspired by the Social Impact Lab (SOIL) at Örebro University, which has been in operation since 2017.
Learn more about the Societal Impact Lab (SIL) and the five researchers who were accepted.