The Future is Collective Advancing Collective Social Innovation to Address Societys Biggest Challenges 2025

Executive summary This report shares insights and learnings from social innovators using collective social innovation approaches to address the world’s most critical challenges. These innovators are exceptionally diverse, representing multiple geographies, themes, governance models and strategies. In spite of this diversity, they are united in their commitment to bringing together vast constituencies to create transformational change. The Schwab Foundation defines collective social innovators as cross-sector leaders who lead, orchestrate or facilitate groups or networks of organizations tackling challenges that are too large for individual organizations. This definition highlights models surmounting social inequalities, incorporating the perspectives and representation of excluded and marginalized groups, as well as vulnerable ecosystems. Importantly, these approaches are distinct from scaling programmatic interventions and are well-suited to achieving large- scale systemic change. While social innovators and entrepreneurs already have an impressive history of working in collaboration with others, the field of social innovation is quickly evolving – especially with the application of new digital technologies – and many organizations now explicitly define collective work as their core function. This report highlights key learnings to better understand the work of collective social innovation. Collective social innovators operate with values that are uniquely suited to address complex, interconnected challenges. These values include: –Bringing together a wide range of stakeholders, including local and proximate actors, to co- create solutions –A commitment to systemic impact over short- term fixes, balancing deep listening with a bias toward action –Maintaining flexibility by embracing failure and anticipating emergence –Restoring the agency of those who are closest to issues –Ensuring respect and balance in relationships between people and natureCollective social innovators are cross-sector leaders who lead, orchestrate or facilitate groups or networks of organizations addressing societal challenges. Image credit: Shikshagraha, India The Future is Collective: Advancing Collective Social Innovation to Address Society’s Biggest Challenges 5