About COSI

We are the competence center for Open Social Innovation.

Learn more about our team

Manuel KreitmeirDirector/Co-Founder manuel.kreitmeir@cosi.social

Manuel Kreitmeir is a Social Entrepreneur and 'Third Culture Kid' with a background as a second-generation tea and spice farmer in Sri Lanka. He is a University Lecture, Facilitator and Thought Leader (openSAP) for Social Innovation. He worked as a Policy Advisor for the UN and European Commission for Social Entrepreneurship and Social Economy. He is passionate about creating (digital) ecosystems where social innovation can thrive.

Dr. Björn PospiechDirector/Co-Founder bjoern.pospiech@cosi.social

Björn Pospiech is a business IT specialist and has a PhD in Medical Psychology. He worked as a process and project management expert for a multinational IT company before becoming a Social Entrepreneur. He is a mindful entrepreneurship coach, keynote speaker, lecturer and Fellow at the European School of Governance (EUSG). As a martial arts teacher he is passionate about supporting people on their way of life.

Vision | Mission | Purpose

Our Vision is an Economy and that Works for People and Planet. Our Mission is to catalyze sustainable solutions to societal problems by facilitating the strength, knowledge and creativity of all stakeholders.

Social Justice and Equity

We will work to promote equality, dignity and a more just society.

Collective Action and Solidarity

We strive for joint action, cooperation and solidarity within the social economy and beyond.

Self-Sufficiency

We strive to facilitate sustainable business models and social entrepreneurship that are self-sufficient wherever sensible.

Accountability

We hold ourselves accountable in all our actions, while maintaining integrity in our performance and advocating for same in public institutions.

Work without Fear to Criticize

We strive to opening the doors for partnerships with government and industry while offering constructive criticism.

Unity in Diversity

We believe in and celebrate diversity social economy and strive to achieve unity amongst social innovators and other like-minded actors.

Open Social Innovation

Open Social Innovation is opening your innovation process to the outside world. This allows ideas, new technologies or feedback from external partners flow into your organization or project. There are a variety of ways to do this, although you should always keep the individual possibilities and requirements of a project in mind. Best practices for Open Social Innovation range from collective knowledge harvesting and crowdsourcing to research networks and start-up challenges.

In contrast, if organizations only innovate with internal experts, they access a smaller, more limited solution horizon. The advantages of open innovation are therefore access to more and more innovative ideas, for example through the different perspectives and expertise, knowledge, for example about needs and markets, as well as stakeholders' perspective and expertise on possible solutions.

In addition to increasing the quality of innovation, Open Social Innovation also brings faster development of solutions because the expertise is already available and does not have to be built up first. Prototyping, validating and measuring solutions complement the process. You can find some of the organizations we work with in the past below.