Collaboration
Open Social Innovation
A new approach to tackling social problems orchestrates the participation of multiple stakeholders in the process from generating ideas to scaling solutions.
Johanna Mair
Leadership
Mastering System Change
Organizations are increasingly turning to system change to tackle big social problems. But systems are complex, and mastering the process requires observation, patience, and reflection. To begin, here are two
approaches to pursuing system change.
IMPACT INDIA
Water Is Power
A project undertaken by Indian NGO Gram Vikas shows how efforts to solve a particular social problem can have a far reaching impact on an entire social system.
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Organizational Development
Innovation and Scaling for Impact: How Effective Social Enterprises Do It
How organizations in the development sector can more systematically consider the implications of the environments in which they work.
Social Enterprise
Market-Oriented and Mission-Focused: Social Enterprises Around the Globe
Social enterprises contribute significantly to the economy, and simultaneously are fiercely social mission-driven.
Organizational Development
When Innovation Goes Wrong
Organizations often stumble when it comes to turning innovation into impact. Here’s a guide to diagnosing and preventing several “pathologies” that underlie this failure.
Research Notes
The Role of Research in Social Innovation
Are research and practice two coins or two sides of the same coin?
Nonprofit Management
Innovate and Scale: A Tough Balancing Act
Organizations need the ability to both scale up successful innovations and create new ones, even those that challenge the status quo.
Big Picture
Ten Years of SSIR
Stanford Social Innovation Review celebrates a decade of innovative ideas and practices.
Essentials of Social Innovation
Innovation Is Not the Holy Grail
It is time to move from innovation as an ideology to innovation as a process.
Government
Social Innovation: International Practices for Diffusion and Policymaking
Videos from the Social Innovation Dialogues convening in Berlin.
Impact Investing
Elizabeth Littlefield
Elizabeth Littlefield heads up OPIC, a federal agency that helps steer billions of dollars of private investment capital to developing countries.
Social Entrepreneurship
When Leadership Is in Our Way
It is time to shift gears and to stop searching for best practice models on leadership within the Fortune 500 companies.
Social Entrepreneurship
Avoiding the “Hope Bubble”
We must invest in the financial literacy of social entrepreneurs and in the social literacy of investors.
Impact Investing
Roundtable on Impact Investing
A group of social innovation leaders from around the world discuss impact investing and how to make it more effective.
Corporate Philanthropy
Chris West
Chris West leverages the assets of the Shell Foundation and its corporate parent to improve the lives of low-income people in the developing world.
Technology & Design
Richard Jefferson
Richard Jefferson believes that biotechnology can be used to benefit the poor and disenfranchised, but only if the R&D process is democratized.