Stanford Social Innovation Review : Informing and inspiring leaders of social change

Social Innovations

Turning the Tides: The Future of Environmentally Conscious Social Innovation

The sun was bright on a clear day across San Francisco for “Turning the Tide,” a global environment conference last Friday. Hosted at picturesque Fort Baker, the Institute at the Golden Gate brought representatives from the corporate, nonprofit, and entrepreneurial start-up worlds together to discuss and share their opinions about some of today’s most pressing environmental issues and most promising innovationst... (continue reading this blog post)

Social Innovations

Skoll Award Recipients Focus on Ecosystem Services Market

Having focused much of my research at Oxford on carbon markets and the development of ecosystem services markets, I was thrilled to see the Skoll Foundation’s recent investments in this area at the ceremony for their 2010 Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. Three of the seven recipients of this year’s awards were from the field of ecosystem services and avoided deforestation. While past recipients have included incredible organization such as the Global Footprint Network, the Marine Stewardship Council, and Water.org, a quick count of those who received a Skoll award from 2005-2009 reveals that only 8 of the past 59 awardes... (continue reading this blog post)

Government

Radical Transparency Will Change the World

A new counterbalance to corporate power is developing: radical transparency, according to ad guru Alex Bogusky. Bogusky is convinced that this real-time transparency, caused by today’s redistributed power and emerging technologies, can be win-win. Radical transparency can be good for corporations and good for the world. It’s the way that humanity can take back control from corporations... (continue reading this blog post)

Social Innovations

Asking the Right Questions: Jeffrey Sachs Speaks at Stanford University

Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Director of The Earth Institute, Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University recently came to speak at Stanford University and raised some interesting points that are very relevant to the questions that are continually being asked by SSIR... (continue reading this blog post)

Social Innovations

Skoll World Forum 2010 Kicks Off in Oxford

The Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship kicks off today in Oxford, United Kingdom. I have been lucky enough to be living in Oxford since September, and now feel even more fortunate to be part of the social media team for this exciting event.

For coverage from past years, check out posts from other SSIR writers from 2007 and 2009.

This year’s theme is “catalysing collaboration for large scale change.” While “collaboration” seems to be a logical operating choice for social entrepreneurs... (continue reading this blog post)

Global Issues

Sustainable Living: Becoming an Unconsumer

A new buzzword has surfaced thanks to the recession: unconsumption.

Unconsumption describes the now savvy and respectable trend of reducing, reusing, and recycling. It's a conscious consumerist mentality. In other words, it's the opposite of the buy-now-throw-away-tomorrow culture that permeated most of the 90s... (continue reading this blog post)

Water

The Water Cycle with a Human Twist

Remember what your middle school science teacher told you about the water cycle? Water evaporates, condensates in clouds, travels across the land, precipitates as it encounters land elevations, run in torrents, penetrates the grounds, sits in undergrounds or surface lakes and eventually flows towards the ocean.

When you hit grad school and you're determined to dig up the story yourself by putting together all the pieces of a very fragmented system, here's what you learn the water cycle really looks like... (continue reading this blog post)

Social Innovations

Q&A: Fred Krupp

Business

Greening the Corporation

Global Issues

Research: The End of the World Is Nigh (Maybe)