PESTEL

The tool addresses in a single canvas the different environmental factors that can drive or hinder the development of a social innovation. As a mapping activity, it highlights different elements that factor into tackling specific challenges, highlighting insufficiencies, barriers and threats, but also available resources, drivers and opportunities. It is a great way to map the ecosystem and current context within which social innovations will develop and to align them with strategic directives and on the basis of different prospective threats or opportunities. It is also a great horizon scanning tool for scenario building and futures work. For this purpose, there is also a values element that has been added to the environment analysis.

The tool aims to help teams get aligned on the context of innovation in order to better design solutions that can be effective, feasible and long-term. It helps to visualize and bring to the surface also the tacit knowledge that each member has of the specific challenge area.  

The tool can be useful for quickly assessing the fit of a solution to local needs and strategic directions before further investment.

The activity is best done in a small group composed of main representatives of the different stakeholders and value creation areas. It can also be done by a small group or project leader who consults with different actor groups through interviews. In subsequent iterations, different actor groups can be informed, consulted or engaged in refining specific parts. The activity has the potential to create new relationships and connections (of mental models) between actors while working on the model. 

The first step is to gather together a working group of key actors across the organization to brainstorm ideas and conduct the research. The team should work together to map out the trends in each area of the matrix (political, economic, social, technological, environment/values, legal), starting a reflection and discussion on how these trends frame their current activity and open up possibilities of different future horizons of development. Based on the initial mapping, ethnographic, field and/or action research strategies (e.g. interviews, focus groups, immersive observation, etc.) should be used to gain further insight of each focus area from the perspective of key stakeholders (See Stakeholder mapping tool). Next, the group should collect evidence for each insight to then evaluate and score based on ‘likelihood’ and ‘impact’: how likely it is to happen and what kind of impact it could have on the organization (similar to impact and feasibility analysis tool, substituting feasibility for likelihood). In the final stage, the group should refine insights and make strategic recommendations on a path forward.  

The tool should be shown to relevant actors (beneficiaries, customers, supply chain actors, employees, etc.) for feedback and iteration. 

The canvas could be translated into the local language. More context-specific terms and questions could be used in the supportive text and questions in each box.