Stanford Social Innovation Review

Social entrepreneurs are inventing new technologies to solve the world’s problems – disease, malnutrition, pollution, and illiteracy – to name just a few. But it takes more than a fancy new gadget to make life better. That’s why the organizations profiled here are working with businesses, NGOs, and governments to get their inventions into the hands of those who need them most.

How CitiStat’s hard data and straight talk saved Baltimore.

A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons.

Greenlight is a nonprofit catalyst: It identifes a local need, scours the country for the best program to meet it, and then establishes a chapter in its hometown.

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. 

Conventional wisdom says that scaling social innovation starts with strengthening internal management capabilities. This study of 12 high-impact nonprofits, however, shows that real social change happens when organizations go outside their own walls and find creative ways to enlist the help of others.

Why does the social sector need social movements?

How the North Texas Food Bank’s Community
Kitchen supplies healthy frozen dinners to the Dallas region’s hungry.

Climate change is a hot issue. To combat global warming and other environmental problems, Greenpeace’s strategy is both to protest against environmental offenders and to help them craft solutions to their ecological gaffes – often at the same time. Using this inside-out approach, Greenpeace catapulted Greenfreeze, an obscure ozone- and climate-safe refrigerant, into widespread use and launched the first Green Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, in 2000.

Managing innovation is more like leading a jazz band than conducting an orchestra.

Social entrepreneurship has come to be synonymous with the individual visionary – the risk taker who goes against the tide to start a new organization to create dramatic social change. The problem with focusing so much attention on the individual entrepreneur is that it neglects to recognize and support thousands of other individuals, groups, and organizations that are crafting solutions to troubles around the globe.

How a German nonprofit is repurposing sex workers’ skills.

The San Francisco Recycling Center gussies up the globe with recycled paint.

Why eco-friendly products may be bad for the environment.

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.

SSIR Managing Editor Eric Nee spoke with the X Prize Foundation’s president, Thomas Vander Ark, about how prizes can stimulate social innovation.