Stanford Social Innovation Review

More diverse workplaces have higher revenues, more customers, larger market shares, and greater relative profits.

New research shows that buying green products makes people more likely to cheat and steal.

As it turns out, family values play an important role in the socially and environmentally responsible practices of big businesses. According to recent research, family firms pollute less than nonfamily firms—and experts say that’s due to the family values that these firms were founded upon.

Social intrapreneurs—change agents already working deep within business—are the answer for business’s woes.

Clean Energy Works Portland gets consumers—and the workforce—energized about weatherization.

BUILDING SOCIAL BUSINESS: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs by Muhammad Yunus

BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is a caution to other companies to take stock of the entirety of their natural capital—not just the natural resource reserve they draw on, but the ecosystems in which they operate. The idea that natural capital should be viewed as a balance sheet asset, to be as carefully stewarded as other forms of capital, surfaced in the late 1990s. But with the publication of the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment by 1,360 international scientists in 2005, more firms are moving from theory to practice… (continue reading this blog post)

Sustainability is not only the best way to describe how to integrate social, environmental, and economic impacts into all corporate decisions, it is also the best way to manage a business to achieve those same results.

There’s been some interesting discussion about Apple, donations and This American Life‘s iPhone application lately that I want to touch on.  Not because I’m really all that invested in either pro- or anti- Apple camp, and not because I love This American Life (which I do - and yes, I have donated).  It’s because this is another example of how our tools are defining community.  (Last month’s post focused on that topic using Causes, Ideablob and Ning as references for the conversation.)  Let’s start at the beginning…

A recent conversation sparked on the Ars Technica blog focused on the use of push-notifications by the This American Life application on iPhones… (continue reading this blog post)

Most poor people start businesses because they have no other choice, not because they have a burning desire to become entrepreneurs. For these “necessity entrepreneurs,” microfranchising—that is, replicating someone else’s small business model—poses fewer risks and offers greater benefits than does creating a new business from scratch.

Studies have shown a correlation in the price of coffee and the health of children in coffee-growing regions. As parents spend more time raising their profitable crop, they neglect their children’s needs.

A huge leap in the exportation of Argentinean wines can be attributed to new public-private institutions that encourage partnerships between government agencies and local industry.

SMALL CHANGE: Why Business Won’t Save the World by Michael Edwards

My typical ballpark snack, a giant salted pretzel, was short stopped by a new addition to the food stands at Yankee Stadium: calorie labels. I’m not usually a calorie-counter, but seeing the shocking 630-calorie label on a seemingly harmless pretzel suddenly made the 175-calorie cotton candy more appealing.

This is the response New York City health officials hoped for when they became the first city in the U.S. to implement a law requiring chain restaurants to post the calorie count of each item, in the same size and font as the price.

But some research questions the effectiveness of calorie labels… (continue reading this blog post)