Stanford Social Innovation Review

Dancing Deer Bakery helps most when it keeps its eye on the bottom line.

(left): CEO Patricia Karter (right) and employees ice cookies. The company hires heavily from its surrounding low-income neighborhood of Roxbury.

TerraCycle turns what others leave behind into fertilizers and fashion.

Why grassroots design will determine the winners in developing markets.

Social entrepreneurs not only must understand the broad environment in which they work, but also must shape those environments to support their goals, when feasible. Borrowing insights from the field of ecology, the authors offer an ecosystems framework to help social entrepreneurs create long-lasting and significant social change.

How for-profit clinics are healing and enriching the rural poor in Kenya.

Peter Liu started his working life as an engineer at the oil giant Chevron Corp. The experience turned him into an avid environmentalist. Several years later, it also led him to co-found the New Resource Bank, which calls itself the nation’s first “green” commercial bank. 

SSIR Academic Editor Jim Phills sat down with former NBA superstar Kevin Johnson to discuss how he’s revitalizing his old inner-city neighborhood.

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. Some say that a more inclusive term is best, but the authors argue that we need a more rigorous definition.

How Lutherans are transforming their love of coffee into global good.

A Chilean firewood certification program spares both the air and indigenous business.

Lower-income patrons of Market Creek Plaza can now invest in the shopping center.

MacArthur “genius” prize winner creates drugs for the developing world.

International development organizations spend lots of money and effort building the capacity of small businesses. Yet they often fail to ask whether people want the businesses’ goods and services. As these stories from Peru show, successful programs start with real buyers who are willing to buy real products.

Nonprofits and businesses are converging - in the value they create, the stakeholders they manage, the organizations they form, and the financial instruments they use.  The era of convergence is upon us.  Do you know how to take advantage of it?