معرفی
Katri-Liis Lepik serves as Associate Professor of Management at Tallinn University's School of Governance, Law and Society. She heads the global Master’s programme in Social Entrepreneurship and mentors the online Social Entrepreneurship Incubation Program. As Chair of the 40-country COST network 'Multi-disciplinary Innovation for Social Change,' she bridges academic research with practical social enterprise development, including founding a UK-based social enterprise employing young ex-offenders through environmental services.
Her research focuses on social entrepreneurship, public sector innovation, and inter-sectoral collaboration, with emphasis on rural contexts and co-creation methodologies. She investigates social finance mechanisms, social hackathon applications, and higher education's role in fostering social innovation, particularly examining how cross-sectoral partnerships can address complex societal challenges through design-led approaches.
Analysis of her 15 most recent publications (2018-2025) reveals consistent exploration of co-creation in public services, with growing attention to rural Estonia, pandemic impacts, and cross-border knowledge transfer. Her work demonstrates increasing sophistication in social finance frameworks and living lab methodologies, while maintaining focus on practical implementation through social hackathons and university-based incubation programs.
Lepik actively mentors emerging social entrepreneurs through her Master's program leadership and online incubation mentorship. She has secured and directed multiple significant projects including the COST Action on social change, 'Co-creation of service innovation in Europe,' and Estonia's social finance market development initiative, consistently translating research into practical tools like social hackathon guidelines and feasibility studies for social finance instruments.
She co-leads the Social Change Lab (socialchangelab.eu) as part of her COST network role, fostering international collaboration among researchers, social enterprise leaders, and policymakers. Her work with Living Labs, particularly in the Helsinki-Tallinn cross-border region, focuses on knowledge transfer for public service innovation, while her social hackathon methodology creates community-driven living laboratories for addressing rural service gaps.
