How Scale and Innovation Can Coexist
The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger L. Martin
Review
Social Enterprise Innovative ways that organizations are using and adapting business strategies to advance social and environmental well-being
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Helping the Poor Save More
To enrich the bottom of the pyramid, bankers to the poor should make saving money easier by using the latest findings from economics and psychology.
Podcast
Chetna Gala Sinha - International Development Through Women
Microfinance has become a staple of international development. In this audio interview, Chetna Gala-Sinha talks with Stanford Center for Social Innovation correspondent Sheela Sethuraman about how her micro-enterprise development bank and foundation are economically empowering rural women in India. She describes the various tools and services that allow women to become financially independent, provide more adequately for their families, and drive international development.
Podcast
Premal Shah - Scaling a Social Enterprise through Crowdsourcing
Kiva has created an online marketplace that allows ordinary citizens to help specific entrepreneurs around the world to thrive with as little as $25. In this Stanford Center for Social Innovation sponsored audio interview, Kiva President Premal Shah discusses how the social enterprise relies on bazaar management techniques to carry out the organization's everyday functions. He describes the benefits of cost reduction and execution time and talks about the possibilities bazaar management opens for social entrepreneurship and the for-profit sector in general.
Podcast
Sam Goldman - Lighting the Way to Economic Development
Let there be light! That's Sam Goldman's motto, and he's taking it around the world. The founder of d.light design talks with Stanford Center for Social Innovation correspondent Sheela Sethuraman about how he is bringing affordable, ecologically sustainable electricity and lighting to billions who are now operating in the dark. In this audio interview, he details aspects of the design, function, marketing, and distribution of the organization's products, as well as the kind of impact the social enterprise is having in some of the most remote, poor areas.
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Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition
Social entrepreneurship is attracting growing amounts of talent, money, and attention, but along with its increasing popularity has come less certainty about what exactly a social entrepreneur is and does.
Design Thinking for Social Innovation
By working closely with the clients and consumers, design thinking allows high-impact solutions to social problems to bubble up from below rather than being imposed from the top.
The Problem With Fair Trade Coffee
Fair Trade-certified coffee is growing in sales, but strict certification requirements are resulting in uneven economic advantages for coffee growers and lower quality coffee for consumers.
Rediscovering Social Innovation
Social entrepreneurship and social enterprise have become popular and positive rallying points for those trying to improve the world, but social innovation is a better vehicle for understanding and creating social change in all of its manifestations.
ESG Is Not Impact Investing and Impact Investing Is Not ESG
Understanding these six important differences will both facilitate better conversations and help channel funds appropriately.