Across the globe, societies are confronting challenges that no longer fit within traditional economic or managerial frameworks: the climate emergency, demographic ageing, digital exclusion, persistent inequality, and the erosion of trust in institutions. Business schools can no longer remain on the sidelines.
At Porto Business School (PBS), we believe our mission must extend beyond preparing leaders for organisational success. We must prepare them to actively transform society. This conviction underpins our growing commitment to social innovation and social entrepreneurship, now embodied in our new flagship initiative: BOOST.
What do we mean by social innovation and social entrepreneurship?
Social innovation refers to new ideas, services, products, partnerships, and business models, that address social needs more effectively than existing solutions. It shifts the focus from innovation for markets alone to innovation for people, communities, and the environment. Social entrepreneurship takes this a step further, translating these ideas into sustainable ventures whose primary objective is to create social value while ensuring long-term economic viability.
These approaches have gained prominence worldwide as the traditional boundaries between the public, private, and social sectors continue to dissolve. Today’s most complex challenges demand collaborative, entrepreneurial, and cross-sector solutions, capabilities that modern leaders must increasingly master.
Embedding social innovation in business education
This understanding has long shaped Porto Business School’s strategic direction. Over the years, PBS has integrated ethics, sustainability, and responsible management across its programmes. Yet the scale and urgency of today’s societal challenges require a deeper and more systemic response, one that empowers leaders to experiment, co-create, and scale solutions with measurable impact.
Social innovation and entrepreneurship are no longer peripheral themes. They are essential competencies for the leaders of tomorrow.
BOOST: an integrated social innovation ecosystem rooted in Matosinhos
This vision takes concrete form through BOOST, an integrated social innovation ecosystem and Partnership for Social Innovation rooted in Matosinhos. BOOST is not merely a programme; it is a collaborative platform designed to convert youth potential into measurable community impact, addressing structural challenges such as the intergenerational reproduction of poverty and unequal access to opportunity.
BOOST brings together students, young people, entrepreneurs, companies, researchers, policymakers, and community organisations around a shared mission: where potential becomes impact.
The scope of BOOST extends well beyond traditional entrepreneurship education. It includes:
- Forums of Impact, engaging more than 150 organisations in structured cross-sector collaboration;
- Social Innovation Labs, where solutions are co-created and prototyped with local partners;
- Real-world testing of minimum viable products in partnership with community institutions.
The incubation phase provides a modular support system for up to ten impact-driven startups, combining bootcamps, mentoring, access to physical and digital infrastructure, and structured pathways to investment and strategic partnerships. This integrated continuum — from activation to acceleration to incubation — positions BOOST as the first fully integrated social innovation ecosystem of its kind in Portugal, mobilising academia, public institutions, civil society, and the private sector around a long-term mission of community transformation.
From vision to measurable and replicable impact
Beyond its conceptual ambition, BOOST uses a robust and rigorously designed operational model. Structured as a 24-month social innovation ecosystem, the project combines community activation, entrepreneurial development, and structured incubation to generate sustainable impact in Matosinhos.
The programme begins with large-scale community outreach, including 25 Impact Workshops engaging more than 500 young people. A rigorous selection process identifies 80 high-potential individuals and 40 promising ideas capable of generating both social and economic value. From this pool, 50 participants enter an Impact Acceleration Programme, culminating in a Demo Day where up to ten emerging impact startups are selected for incubation.
This pipeline ensures that BOOST is not aspirational rhetoric, but a measurable, scalable, and replicable model for community-rooted social innovation.
According to Nelson Vento, BOOST Project Manager:
“BOOST translates social innovation into a structured, evidence-based ecosystem that connects academic excellence, territorial governance and entrepreneurship to generate measurable social value and long-term impact.”
Three strategic pillars of BOOST
BOOST is structured around three interlinked strategic pillars:
- Capacity building
Participants develop the skills to diagnose social needs, design human-centred solutions, measure impact, and build sustainable business models. Unlike traditional entrepreneurship education, which often prioritises competition and markets, BOOST broadens the lens to include community engagement, public value creation, and systemic thinking.
- Cross-sector collaboration
BOOST recognises that meaningful social change emerges through collaboration between businesses, governments, universities, and civil society. Through challenge-based learning, innovation labs, and project residencies, participants co-create solutions that are viable, scalable, and deeply embedded in real contexts.
- A territorial living lab
Rooted in Matosinhos and Northern Portugal, BOOST functions as a living lab – a real-life environment where communities, institutions and innovators co-create, test and scale solutions together – where participants work directly with communities and local organisations. Solutions are not theoretical exercises, but practical interventions with tangible outcomes.
Strengthening Porto Business School’s strategic vision
BOOST reinforces Porto Business School’s belief that social innovation is a defining pillar of contemporary leadership education. In a world shaped by artificial intelligence, automation, and rapid technological change, innovation must be both technological and social. The leaders we cultivate must be capable of imagining alternative futures and mobilising diverse stakeholders to realise them.
As Daniel Gesling, Porto Business School faculty member, highlights:
“What sets BOOST apart is how it mobilizes a diverse ecosystem of regional partners to tackle social challenges in a practical, results-oriented way. This collaborative approach enables local communities to move from intent to impact in a sustainable manner.”
Demand for this mindset continues to grow across sectors. Companies face increasing pressure to demonstrate ESG performance. Governments seek sustainable and cost-effective responses to complex societal challenges. Younger generations increasingly prioritise purpose-driven careers. Universities, in turn, are expected not only to produce knowledge, but to act as engines of societal transformation. BOOST positions Porto Business School at the centre of this movement.
A strategic imperative for the future
Ultimately, social innovation and entrepreneurship represent far more than an attractive academic offering for Porto Business School, they are a strategic imperative. They reflect our commitment to educating leaders who understand that economic value and social progress must advance together. They align PBS with global trends reshaping competitiveness, legitimacy, and long-term resilience.
Most importantly, they signal our determination not merely to observe the future, but to help build it.
BOOST marks the beginning of a new chapter in which Porto Business School deepens its role as a catalyst for positive change, locally, nationally, and internationally. We invite students, faculty, alumni, and partners to join us in this mission: to develop solutions that matter, to scale ideas that generate impact, and to demonstrate that business, at its best, is a transformative force for good.