"The pandemic represents an unusual opportunity to reflexamine, reimagine and reboot our world." With this sentence Klaus Schwab opened the Great Reboot initiative at the last World Economic Forum with the intention of finding new ideas and seizing the opportunities offered by this status to make our world a better place.

Sustainability is here to stay, and this poses challenges for all stakeholders, especially for companies. test of this are the priorities and policies adopted by the EU and the implementation of the Green Pact which aims to achieve a sustainable post-covid recovery, transforming Economics into a more modern, efficient, competitive and people-centered site.

This fact can be seen as one more obstacle in the system or as an opportunity to change the way we look at things, to transform our ways of doing and managing, taking into account the triple economic, social and environmental dimension provided by the sustainability.

In this context, in our opinion, the social innovation (SI) can be one tool, but not the only one, to promote a sustainability strategy in companies that will enable them to achieve and demonstrate their real impact on the triple bottom line.

We state this for two reasons, the first by its own definition. The SI is an innovation subject characterized by three aspects:

1. Contribute added value to the businessThis means that it impacts both the business results and the intangible aspects of business (reputation, image, brand);

2. It is a subject of innovation that has an impact.i.e., social change. This occurs either because the SI initiative is oriented toward the solution of a specific social problem (which may arise, for example, from the core of the business: health, Education, etc.) or because it is oriented to generate changes in the company's way of doing and managing (organizational diversity policies, supplier selection, etc.).

3. Its implementation is carried out jointly with the social agents involved..

The second refers to the fact that the SI, by its very nature, analyzes and addresses organizational and environmental challenges from a transversal perspective and approach , in order to achieve the greatest possible impact on the triple bottom line, thus moving from philanthropy to innovation.

Through IS activities, companies can design solutions to address various social concerns faster, manage problems more efficiently, create competitive advantage and social value. To achieve this, it is necessary to:

1. Implement a clear and shared socialpurpose aligned in terms of sustainability that differentiates us and channel resources for the development of IS activities with the participation of the different agents (internal and external). This is an aspect core topic when it comes not only to solving social problems but also to creating shared value.
2. Knowing and understanding the environment around us and identifying the social problems to be solved is essential to identify how to combine innovation with the desired impact. To this end, integrating an innovation ecosystem where there is frequent interaction between agents is vital to recognize those aspects that serve as triggers to stimulate ideas that give rise to IS practices.
3. Possessing the right competencies for promote IS actions is also a piece core topic. Otherwise, it is crucial to seek them out and incorporate them into one's own corporate culture. This absorption capacity is a good example of the competencies that should be fostered to develop IS activities and, in general, all those associated with the search for and assimilation of knowledge, both internal and external.
4. Finally, build a solid business case based on being able to account for the impact generated at the economic, social and environmental levels. This is not something purely theoretical. With the SI, sustainable practices can be promoted either because a specific problem is solved from the core of their activity or because through the SI they manage to integrate sustainability in the way of managing and doing organizational work. .

Fortunately, we can find examples of companies that are points of reference letter in terms of sustainability. It is worth highlighting the case of the Spanish SME Ecoalf, born in 2012 with the idea of creating a sustainable fashion business taking care of the planet's natural resources and people. For them innovation and sustainability are indivisible because innovation is the tool that allows them to design solutions to the environmental and social challenges they face in the fashion industry.

In this case we can see the presence of a clear social purpose , the investment they made in research and development+i and the search for competencies for their organization by establishing alliances with different actors to understand the problem, i.e., the scarce and leave quality supply of recycled materials to create high-end products. In this way, they were able to build a solid sustainable business model : economic, environmentally friendly and with social impact. Today, Ecoalf is a business B, a world leader in the manufacture, sale and use of this subject of materials and has been awarded multiple prizes and recognitions.

If we want more competitive companies , we need to think about core topic impact and sustainability and, to this end, we must foster a corporate culture in which people are willing to take risks, develop partnership practices and promote a culture in society that is more open to new products and services. The SI is a tool for companies to rethink their business models, go beyond profit generation, innovate and collaborate in terms of social impact.

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María Eugenia Clouet and José Antonio Alfaro Tanco
Institute business and Humanism, School of Economic and Business Sciences University of Navarra.