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Social entrepreneurship is a relatively new concept in Estonia and measuring the social impact of enterprises is not yet the norm. It has gained more awareness during recent years and therefore several support instruments have been established. The aim of the paper is to provide a framework for impact analysis of an incubator and analysis of the evaluation of the program for social enterprises according to the designed framework. The incubation program itself was piloted at a higher education institution. The paper addresses the concept of social enterprises, new social venture creation, incubation by a higher education institution and its impact on social enterprises. While the development of enterprises is a common topic, the research on social impact incubators is still scarce. The study is characterised by a descriptive and an exploratory study design. The paper explores the social enterprise incubator through mixed-method two-stage content analysis of the applications and self-analysis reports of the participants of the incubator. In the process of the content analysis, qualitative data analysis is used. Finally, the paper concludes that the incubator was successful as it helped the social enterprises to become sustainable and enhanced their social impact. The limitation of the research is the evaluation design which addresses measuring the successfulness of the incubation immediately after the end of the programme and not in the long-term. The study contributes to the literature on measuring the successfulness of incubation processes and on the practice of incubating new social ventures with social impact.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted higher education worldwide. Higher education institutions needed to adapt very rapidly to the crisis and a new environment, and also needed to revise their role in society. Higher education institutions can contribute to social innovation through research, education and helping to address citizens’ issues and communities’ needs, which is why the creation of social labs by higher education institutions has increased in the last decades. Social labs are spaces where higher education institutions experiment and test new ideas. However, social labs at higher education institutions are still a relatively new phenomenon and have not yet been examined sufficiently. Moreover, it is not fully known how COVID-19 affected social labs’ activities and impacted their establishment. To reflect on the current reality, this article focuses on two research questions: (1) How were social lab activities and partnerships affected during the pandemic? and (2) What impact has COVID-19 had on social labs? To answer these questions, a quantitative survey was conducted, and the data was analysed by quantitative and qualitative methods. The results showed that the biggest challenge lies in organisational processes and human resources management. Yet, it should be noted that COVID-19 also provided opportunities. They are mainly linked with an impulse to develop innovations and increase digitisation in social labs. The study showed that social labs with flexible organisational processes and human resource management were more successful in their adaptation to crisis conditions caused by COVID-19. In summary, this article provides insight into social labs in higher education institutions by bridging an existing knowledge gap in scientific literature, and expands on it by investigating pandemics as having a crisis impact on social lab development.

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Drawing on three semi-structured focus group interviews with a sample of 14 social hackathon participants in southern Estonia, this article reports the findings of participants' experiences of the co-creation process in developing new services or innovative solutions to community problems by using a method of social hackathon. In general, hackathon was perceived as a creative and 'out-of-the-box' type of approach, a non-traditional way of thinking and an openness to constructing solutions in a new and creative way. Furthermore, the hackathon was recognised as a fitting tool for the social worker to find solutions in the community with service users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euroregions are administrative-territorial structures intended to promote cross-border cooperation between neighbouring local or regional authorities of different countries located along shared state borders. They are widely known tools of cooperation among the regions. Having integrated structures and their own financial resources, euroregions are able to address a variety of cross-border topics such as health, research and development, education and training, waste management, environmental protection, tourism and leisure, rescue and security, transport and communication infrastructure, mobility of people, and business cooperation. This paper explores the main characteristics and problems of euroregions as institutions in the Baltic Sea Region and especially in the regions bordering the Third countries. First, it describes euroregions; then it focuses on their compositions and roles and main issues confronting them with reference to the empirical research carried out among the thirty-five cross-border cooperating organisations. The new legal instrument for euroregions deserves special attention since it provides a basis under public law for decentralised trans-European cooperation between regional and/or local authorities. The article concludes with a discussion of the needs and associated development opportunities available to euroregions within the Baltic Sea Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]