Stanford Social Innovation Review

The B Corp seal of approval distinguishes truly responsible businesses from mere poseurs. —By Jenna Lawrence

The Rockefeller Foundation is staying at the forefront of new and big ideas, funding new innovation processes, like crowdsourcing and collaborative competitions

DEAD AID: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo

STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABILITY: A Business Manifesto by Adam Werbach

National Instrument’s partnerships not only energize science education, but also boost the company’s brand and employee morale.

Left: An engineer readies her robot at the 2008 FIRST Lego League World Festival, an annual competition that brings together teams of students to show off their engineering chops. Powering her robot was sophisticated software developed by National Instruments. Her team, the Power Peeps of Swartz Creek, Mich., placed third. 

Market solutions to poverty, which include services and products targeting consumers at the “bottom of the pyramid,” portray poor people as creative entrepreneurs and discerning consumers. Yet this rosy view of poverty-stricken people is not only wrong, but also harmful. 

It’s time to rethink the “C” in CSR.

In their efforts to be socially responsible, most companies fail to wield their most powerful tool: lobbying. Yet corporations such as Mary Kay, Royal Dutch Shell, and General Motors are increasingly leveraging their deep pockets, government contacts, and persuasive powers for the cause of good. Not all kinds of socially responsible lobbying are created equal, however. The authors discuss which forms are best for companies and society.

Why the Soccer Ball Project—one of the world’s first multistakeholder efforts to stop abuses of labor rights—is failing to protect workers in Pakistan.

Consumers say they want to buy ecologically friendly products and reduce their impact on the environment. But when they get to the cash register, their Earth-minded sentiments die on the vine. Although individual quirks underlie some of this hypocrisy, businesses can do a lot more to help would-be green consumers turn their talk into walk.

CSR as competitive advantage

Rewarding the socially responsible with customers.

Social entrepreneurship and social enterprise have become popular rallying points for those trying to improve the world. These two notions are positive ones, but neither is adequate when it comes to understanding and creating social change in all of its manifestations. The authors make the case that social innovation is a better vehicle for doing this. They also explain why most of today’s innovative social solutions cut across the traditional boundaries separating nonprofits, government, and for-profit businesses.