Social entrepreneurship

Every year, over 100,000 children of jaundice, mainly because of lack of access to diagnostic equipment in the poorest parts of the world. A new Norwegian app aims to reverse this statistic. The treatment of jaundice is both simple and painless, but as many as 114,000 newborns annually die of the disease every year, mainly due to a lack of …

After a test period in Scandinavia, Plane is ready to launch its icebreaker app globally. The launch will occur in connection with the LAUNCH Festival in San Francisco. The founders of plane are CEO and co-founder,Tim Allison , and co-founder, Thomas Baastrup Jacobsen. “We have spent the last few months testing our app in Scandinavia and building a community. It …

Creathio is a platform that “bridges specialized students with cases posted by companies that have a problem to solve, or simply want to improve an area of their business”.  The goal of the company is to match students with companies, so they can get “hands on” experience with business cases. Creathio works by having students work on real case studies …

Sustainable Brands is a global business community dedicated to helping shift the world to a sustainable economy.  In anticipation of their Copenhagen conference in 2016, founder KoAnn Skrzyniarz outlines 7 sustainable, global business trends. KoAnn Skrzyniarz  travels around the world working with large brands to promote sustainability while still maintaining a competitive business. “There will be new sustainable ideas and …

Iceland’s Frumbjörg, started by Brandur Karlsson in cooperation with Sjálfsbjörg, the Icelandic national federation of the disabled, is an Innovation Center for Mobility. The initiative’s goal is to provide the disabled with the opportunities for employment and develop innovations within the healthcare and social sectors. The social entrepreneurship venture is meant to provide individuals with disabilities office space and guidance …

A Danish start-up company called Unfair Fashion is taking on the challenge of changing the mindset in the fashion industry. Innovation and creative thinking often rely on a flexible market environment, willingness to change, and the potential for collaborations. The fashion industry has often been seen as the opposite: a closed and self-focused market, where transparency is not a high …

Finnish ed-tech startup Funzi starts with a premise you may be familiar with – learning on a mobile phone. But their unique focus on emerging markets has people around the world sitting up and taking notice. Funzi is reinventing how learning is delivered – not in terms of content, but in terms of the delivery of learning to the individual. …

Imagine using your phone to discover new sustainable businesses and services. But wait – anyone can do that, if they have internet connection.  But what about just by texting?  SURE. Sure is a startup that allows you to be more sustainable by using Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is not an app – it’s a local number. You simply text Sure, …

The two-day tech conference Next, which happened in the middle of the four-day Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, was an introduction to the new technologies that will shape of how we will live and work in the future.  But what about the ethics behind these technologies? It all comes down to the kind of legacy we are leaving and what we …

The grand prize at Ultrahack 2015 went to the Butterfly Effect Project, who participated in the Civic Tech Track sponsored by Forum Virium. The project aims to enhance the way cities handle urban planning, by creating a platform for citizen involvement. The team, led by Natalia Remee, an architect by training from Northern Mexico, came from diverse backgrounds and nationalities:  …

Eco-­consumption is a growing trend in Finland, thanks to Pure Waste Textiles – a Finnish startup revolutionizing the way clothes are made. This article was originally posted on Arctic Startup. About five years ago, the founders of Costo, a Finnish company that produces accessories from unused materials in the textile industry, decided to explore opportunities to go further and produce …

Daniel Mierzwinski is 26 years and runs the successful Instagram-startup Sponsta. But before his success, he hit rock bottom. Hear how he picked himself up and how the experience has given him a whole new outlook on life. “I have always had a great passion to create,” says the 26-year-old product manager in Sponsta when we begin the interview. “Not …