ACSI is an action-learning camp addressing societal concerns in a highly effective manner: it initiates a continuing process for empowering people and organizations to think and act in concert, creating shared understanding of how opportunities for societal innovation emerge, and how to use them constructively in business and research. At the same time participants apply innovation skills to address challenging real-life issues.
Built on the accumulated expertise of diverse international innovators, ACSI uses renewed Triple Helix thinking and Knowledge Triangle principles to bring field experts, practicing innovation professionals, top researchers, and high-potential students together to actively address societal concerns, and use rapid prototyping tools to translate promising ideas into practical projects aimed at societal innovation.
The world´s first ACSI camp was prototyped in Finland in 2010: 120 people from across Europe, North America and Asia took part. In the summer of 2011, the second edition of ACSI brought 160 participants from 15 different countries together in order to address 10 issues at the 8-day camp.
This year’s camp was organized in Helsinki from 7-14 August 2012. 80 people from 20 different countries worked with diverse societal challenges, including a cluster of five cases looking at different perspective of “Inclusive Society” in pioneering city innovation hubs in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands.
ACSI is co-organized by Finland’s Aalto University and the New Club of Paris. It is part of the Aalto Societal Innovation Initiative activities at CKIR – Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research, an independent, international, academic and multidisciplinary research centre at the Aalto University School of Economics.
More information about the challenge descriptions and early results can be found on the ACSI website: http://acsi.aalto.fi/en/