2. Manoj Kumar of Social Alpha

Manoj Kumar (LinkedIn) is co-founder and CEO of Social Alpha, a "multistage innovation curation and venture development platform for science and technology start-ups that aim to address the most critical social, economic and environmental challenges".

The innovation system that works for industrial, and existing sectors, it works for those sectors, but it doesn't work for the unaddressed problems.

Therefore, Social Alpha is doing is itself an innovation at the level of a system by which innovation can happen. It's a system-level innovation, which then people with technical or other novelties can go from lab to marketplace, including creating a marketplace as they go along. 

Social Alpha is focused on India. Since its inception in 2016, Social Alpha has nurtured more than 200 start-ups including 60+ seed investments.

This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters.  You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.


Here are the times of each of the questions. 

PERSONAL AND ORGANISATIONAL INTRO

0:53 - Q1. What is your role and organisation? 

ORGANISATIONAL SETTING

4:12 - Q3. How is ‘sustainability’ framed in your organisation? (For instance: are there specific key words or phrases? Is it only environmental?)

 6: 46 - Q2. What role does your department / function have in the organisation? What is expected from you? How does that connect to the organisation’s strategy?

INNOVATION STORY

12:00 - Q4. Can you tell us the story of a good example of your work on innovation for sustainability?

INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

20:50 - Q5. What are the key methods and practices you use for innovation for sustainability?

25:57 - Q6. What are the biggest challenges you face, and how do you overcome them?

27:34 - Q7. If there was one thing policymakers could do which would make your work significantly easier, what would that be?

THE FUTURE

28:45 - Q8. What are your organisation’s priorities on innovation going forward and why?

This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.