Social Economy Today is an annual public lecture that invites members of Scotland’s third sector to share their insights and perspectives on the current opportunities, challenges, and prospects of Scotland’s social economy. The lecture aims to provoke discussion on these themes as part of GCU’s ambition to be Glasgow’s leading civic university and initiate productive debate on shared ambitions and how to achieve them.
This year’s title is: From Social Economy to Impact Economy: How Korea is Mainstreaming Social Value through Policy, Capital and Markets.
Our speaker: Gayoung Imm, Associate Principal Researcher, Centre for Social Value Enhancement Studies (CSES), SK Group
Discover how South Korea is transforming social value from a policy aspiration into an economic reality.
Over the past three decades, the social economy has demonstrated that organisations with a social mission can create significant social value. The challenge is not that social enterprises lack resources, but that the value they create is rarely recognised, rewarded, or exchanged within the mainstream economy.
This lecture explores how the transition from Social Economy to Impact Economy may address this challenge. Drawing on Korea’s experience, it examines three interconnected transformations: the institutionalisation of social value through public policy, the emergence of Outcome-Based Finance and Social Progress Credit (SPC) as new ways of rewarding verified social value, and the evolution towards markets where social value can become comparable, financeable, and ultimately tradeable.
Comparing Korea’s experience with Scotland’s Community Wealth Building agenda, the lecture invites discussion on how policy, capital, and markets can work together to make social value an integral part of the mainstream economy.
Gayoung Imm is an Associate Principal Researcher at the Centre for Social Value Enhancement Studies (CSES), SK Group, where she leads Global Partnerships and conducts research on innovative finance. Previously, she served as a Research Fellow at the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, part of the World Economic Forum, where she contributed to the Innovative Finance Initiative and co-authored multiple reports on innovative finance and market-based solutions for social and environmental challenges. She holds a master’s degree in Public Policy and Management, with a particular interest in designing institutions and market mechanisms that integrate social value into economic systems.