With valuable advice for all types of entrepreneurs, this Stanford Entrepreneurship Week panel offers a unique perspective for funding a social enterprise startup. In this panel discussion, Kriss Deiglmeier leads an engaging discussion between funders and social entrepreneurs that provides actionable advice and insightful lessons in this discussion from the second annual Social Entrepreneurship Day at Stanford University.
Now that global warming is recognized as a real and serious problem, discussion is turning to practical challenges of reducing emissions in the long term. Host of the Center for Social Innovation, Rick Duke, discusses a new report by McKinsey & Company that considers how to address the problem affordably. In this audio lecture, Duke outlines some of the emerging technologies and public policy changes that will be needed to support such a process.
If you're living on this planet you probably sense that the world is in a time of tremendous change. Ashoka founder William Drayton calls it "Revolution" in his keynote address on the occasion of receiving the Purpose Prize Entrepreneurial Leadership Award. In this audio lecture, Drayton offers inspiring words about the nature of the times we are in, and how becoming a change maker is critical for seizing opportunities that are emerging in these unprecedented times.
One of the biggest problems that low-income people around the world face is the lack of access to capital that might otherwise help them rise out of poverty. Invited to Stanford, actress Natalie Portman turns the spotlight on her work to promote FINCA's International Village Banking Campaign, aiming to bring financial services to one million of the world's lowest-income families through 100,000 Village Banks by 2010.
One of the best methods proven to alleviate poverty is microlending to women, who have a great track record for using loans wisely to create small business enterprises that sustain their entire families. Host of the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford, Lynne Patterson talks about the creation of Pro Mujer, an international microfinance and women's development network in Latin America. She details the mission, objectives, methods, and progress, illuminating the organization's empowering impact on the lives of its many clients.
In the United States, at least 60% of the population wears corrective lenses. Worldwide, in contrast, only 5% of the population does. Such statistics have led Josh Silver, Oxford atomic physicist, to conclude that more than half the world needs vision correction but doesn't have access to it. In this audio lecture, host of the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford, Silver shares how he decided to "do something useful for the world" by creating specialized, liquid-filled corrective lenses that are now worn by some 26,000 people in developing countries.
How can philanthropy and markets be used to promote international development? In this audio lecture, Yasmina Zaidman describes how the Acumen model supports microenterprises that are helping to alleviate poverty. She also shares the opportunities and challenges the organization faces.
In developing countries, many tests for infectious diseases never reach the market because there is little financial incentive to pharmaceutical companies to get them there. In this audio interveiw, Alana Conner, senior editor at the Stanford Social Innovation Review, converses with Helen Lee, whose research department at the University of Cambridge has developed tests that allow for the rapid detection—and thus treatment—of diseases in rural settings around the world.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Stuart Smolkin's conveyor belt manufacturing company, Intralox, had no disaster plan in place. The company had to deal with the disruption of electricity, phones, and computer systems in order to organize evacuated employees into recovery teams. How did Intralox get running again in a mere 30 days? In this Stanford podcast, Smolkin offers lessons on preparedness for businesses faced with disruption.
Nike has taken pains to clean up its act since the media brought public attention to human rights violations in its supplier factories in the 1990s. Through the Nike Foundation, the sports and fitness giant is taking a proactive approach to some of the world's most challenging social problems. In this audio lecture, Nike Foundation president Maria Eitel talks to a Stanford MBA audience about how the organization is focusing on creating economic opportunities for adolescent girls around the world as a means of alleviating poverty.
In nonprofit management, organizations should approach corporations as they would clients and offer tailored marketing operations that serve their needs. That's the advice Nancy Lee delivers in this audio lecture. Speaking to an audience of nonprofit executives during the 2006 Nonprofit Management Institute at Stanford, Lee shares the lessons from 20 years of building nonprofit-corporate partnerships that both serve corporations' objectives and enhance nonprofits' mission delivery.
If sustainability is to be woven into all human activities, tomorrow's leaders will be required to understand how their organization interacts with its environment. In this audio lecture, Stanford Graduate School Professor Bill Barnett looks at the new leadership challenges facing executives in business, government, and nonprofit organizations with an environmental purpose. Barnett now offers the first of its kind executive education leadership program designed to advance environmental responsibility across sectors.
Based in Silicon Valley, Kiva is an innovative social enterprise that uses the internet to connect lenders with small businesses around the world. In this audio interview, Jessica Flannery talks with Design for Change host Sheela Sethuraman about starting the organization, and reflects on some of the reasons for its rapid growth and success.
Environmental sustainability is an area ripe for social entrepreneurship. In this panel discussion at Stanford, industry experts discuss the challenges and opportunities for enterprising business minds in the area of climate change. They consider how new economies like China and India are tackling the problem, and whether entrepreneurs should lead with "impact" or "profitability" in pitching solution-oriented ideas to investors.
In this panel discussion, social entrepreneurship is the common thread uniting a leader of a multibillion-dollar private equity fund, a dot-com carbon cowboy, and one of the original Schwab social entrepreneurs. All of them are harnessing business to build a better world. Paul Fletcher, Dan Whaley, and Nic Frances give their Stanford audience a glimpse into the personal side of being a social entrepreneur.
