3 Questions To… Léa Zaslavsky, cofounder of Makesense, a global ecosystem committed to citizen engagement and impact-oriented startups through incubation, impact investing and corporate programs.
1.
Makesense defines itself as an international community that accompanies and brings together committed citizens, passionate entrepreneurs, and visionary organizations to solve the challenges of our time. How do your solutions disrupt from traditional solutions offered by incubators?
We focus on supporting and funding pioneers entrepreneurs, who not only dream to financially succeed but also to really shape an inclusive and sustainable new world. The impact focus changed the way we select, support and even fund the companies. Of course, we offer strategic coaching, offices, mentors, connexions to the entrepreneurs, as traditional incubators do. But we also include the entrepreneurs into a community that thinks differently and builds companies differently. We bring them inspirations, innovations on managerial, business and funding practices compatible with environmental limited resources and social expectations.
2.
Today, addressing the world’s social challenges through innovative technological solutions is at the heart of the movement of Tech for Good. Why are such initiatives so important in your view and how do you figure out the development of such initiatives in the future, the main issues it must respond to?
Tech is a wonderful tool to solve today's issues. But as every tool, what matters is the objective the tool is used to and the means. Tech for Good comes with a higher concern related to tech security, data protection, accessibility of the solutions, energy consumptions etc. I believe not enough attention is brought to low tech solutions, solutions that can be deployed anywhere, with limited resources and without having a PHD degree. As the mantra says "more is less", I believe the key for the future of the tech for good relies on sobriety.
3.
There is more and more questioning of our current economic model. Do you think that social and solidarity economy is nowadays a solution to overcome its dysfunctions? During the covid crise, the social economy has show first that its one of the main provider of essential services and second that its rules make it more resistant to crisis.
Social economy has not only shown it can overcome dysfunctions in our society but also that it is crucial to overcome crises. Social economy can count on community circuits of distributions, on local productions, on decentralized internal organizations. Organizations from the social economy create qualitative and not easily outsourced jobs, and with a higher spead (2,5x more than "classic economy" in France). Social economy plays a key role in strategic sectors like health, food, textile, autonomy industry.