The Innovation Foundation is the global corporate foundation of the Adecco Group. But it has both an unusual model — and an unusual history.
The foundation was created by the Adecco Group in 2017 as a traditional corporate foundation executing mainly transactional grantmaking with an eclectic mix of programs and initiatives — well-intentioned efforts that lacked a unifying purpose. As Innovation Fund Managing Director Cynthia Hansen recalls, “there was a little bit of a mishmash of things that went into the foundation… a bit of youth, a bit of sport, a bit of athletes, some music, some humanitarian.”
Eight years later, it’s still just as connected to the Adecco Group, but it operates as what Hansen calls a “social innovation lab” — a test bed for new models of corporate philanthropy, built not on grantmaking but on design, venture-building, and open-source dissemination.