At Impact Days Vienna 2025, the FI4INN project took a leading role in demonstrating how innovative financial tools can drive sustainable entrepreneurship, inclusive regional development, and long-term social impact. Through two well-received sessions—one focused on financing mechanisms and the other on impact measurement—FI4INN highlighted the evolving relationship between finance, innovation, and mission-driven investment.
Unlocking Capital Through Financial Innovation
The first session, “Financing the Future: Innovative Instruments for Entrepreneurship & Innovation,” brought together a cross-sector audience of investors, development finance institutions, public agencies, and corporates. It examined how emerging financing models—such as revenue-based financing, convertible impact notes, blended finance, public guarantees, and outcome-based funding—are expanding access to capital for socially driven entrepreneurs.
These mechanisms, speakers argued, are not just financial novelties, they are tools for economic transformation. By reducing risk and improving flexibility, they enable mission-aligned ventures to scale in underserved regions and sectors that traditional finance often overlooks.
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Rethinking Risk, Reward, and Impact
Gianfranco Di Salvo, FI4INN expert and innovation strategist, delivered a powerful intervention on the need to reframe risk in the context of impact finance:
“Social innovation shouldn’t be treated as a high-risk outlier. It’s a strategic investment in future resilience. Financial innovation needs to be anchored in intentionality and long-term value—not just financial returns.”
Di Salvo called for a more systemic approach that connects financial design with policy frameworks and local development priorities, particularly through hybrid models that bring public and private capital together.
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From Theory to Practice: Measuring What Matters
The second session, titled “Measuring What Matters: ESG & Impact in Financial Instruments,” took a more hands-on approach. Through group exercises and co-creation workshops, participants explored how to define and implement impact KPIs and evaluation frameworks for different financing instruments.
Discussions focused on:
- Integrating ESG principles into financial structures from the design stage
- Bridging the gap between intentions and outcomes
- Creating common standards for data, metrics, and evaluation
The session encouraged participants to co-design strategies that make impact measurable, comparable, and actionable, especially important as EU policy and investor expectations increasingly demand transparency and accountability.
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Driving Systemic Change Across Ecosystems
Both sessions underscored FI4INN’s strategic vision: to build an enabling environment where capital flows not only to profit but to purpose. The project is actively working with regional governments, financial intermediaries, and ecosystem builders to deploy financial instruments that support inclusive innovation, particularly in less-developed regions.
Impact Days Vienna offered a powerful platform for this work, showcasing FI4INN’s unique role in bridging capital, policy, and practice.
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