Inside Social Innovation – Détails, épisodes et analyse

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In this final episode of this special series, Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, share how they’re redefining the role of philanthropy in addressing public health crises and preparing for future pandemics.  

A full transcript is available here.

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In this episode, Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and La June Montgomery Tabron, president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, discuss the origins of wealth inequality and its impact on American democracy. They also share how their institutions are creating new pathways for all communities to access secure and vibrant futures.

A full transcript is available here.

What do mayors look for and ask from nonprofit managers? What do they wish leaders in the sector would ask of them, and how can public servants and nonprofit leaders learn to better communicate and collaborate?

In this recording from SSIR’s 2019 NMI conference, Mayors Libby Schaaf of Oakland and Michael Tubbs of Stockton spoke with Autumn McDonald, director of New America CA, about the best ways to build mutually beneficial partnerships between local government and nonprofits.

"I've seen fear around collaboration—how is this going to take something away from me?” Mayor Schaaf says. “We have got to think big. We have got to be less afraid."

LaborVoices brings unprecedented transparency to supply chain management to improve social responsibility. In this short audio lecture, Dr. Kohl Gill, CEO of LaborVoices, Inc., discusses his company’s mobile technology platform. He uses crowdsourcing to let workers’ voices bring accountability to supply chain management. Dr. Gill believes that real time information drives improvement in workforce management from both a social responsibility and operational perspective. In this Social Innovation Conversations, Stanford University podcast, Dr. Gill shows how LaborVoices helps to create real-time, long-term relations and communication from supply chain executives to the factory floor. This supports accountability across all stakeholders, creates a better overall work environment, and improves social, environmental, and company performance.

Dr. Kohl S. Gill is the CEO of LaborVoices, Inc., providing intelligence to global workers and supply chain executives. Dr. Gill served in the U.S. State Department, as the South Asia and Middle East Labor Affairs Officer for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Dr. Gill served as an Indicorps Fellow in the slum areas of Delhi, India, fighting both petty and grand corruption at the local level. Dr. Gill is a graduate of the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a Ph.D. for his work in semiconductor physics.

Ned Breslin kicks off the series by telling us where he draws his inspiration from and where he gets his perspective on social change from–punk rock. With a disregard for tradition and a fierce desire to challenge the norm, the punk rock ethos is the heartbeat of a story of social entrepreneurship. To the rise of social entrepreneurship, punk rock offers a narrative by breaking sideways in a world that tends to go straight ahead.  With the immensity of today’s global challenges, Ned argues that the story arc of punk, its relentless push for change, offers important insights into how social entrepreneurs operate everywhere, whether they like punk rock or not.

Host Ned Breslin is the CEO of Water For People. Ned found himself working on a water project in northern Kenya in 1987 and never looked back. Twenty years later he moved back to the US to join Water For People as its Director of International Programs, eventually becoming CEO in 2009. He is a recipient of the 2011 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

Being sustainable at the core requires corporate social responsibility that thinks beyond just good works. In this audio lecture, Coca Cola Chief Administrative Officer, Alex Cummings, shares his company’s experience applying environmental sustainability as an essential element to sustainable business. Mr. Cummings relates how Coca Cola aims to double its business in a decade through social entrepreneurship. He describes how they are employing social enterprise to improve packaging and supply chain logistics. They use organic material in plastic bottles and empowering one-woman distribution companies in rural Africa. In this Social Innovation Conversations, Stanford University podcast, Cummings describes how, instead of philanthropic giving, strategic partnerships are used to strengthen corporate citizenship in local communities. Coca-Cola uses renewable resources and recycling projects to enhance environmental sustainability and international development.

Today’s model of consumerism does not prioritize the efficient use of resources throughout the supply chain. Consumers just don’t use the full lifetime of a product. In this talk, e-commerce social entrepreneur and former Walmart sustainability executive Andy Ruben emphasizes opportunities for efficient design, production, and reuse of consumer products, from the perspective of corporations and consumers. Speaking at the 2012 Global Supply Chain Management Forum, Ruben details ways to improve supply chain efficiency. He explains why he hopes this new model for product exchange will revolutionize the way we think about what we buy, and what we throw away.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are usually thought of as top-down, with the interests of company executives taking precedence over other workers. In this talk, CB Bhattacharya, a visiting Stanford professor and author of Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value, examines why the traditional approach to CSR should be reexamined. Speaking at a seminar organized by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, he details how his research supports stakeholder-driven corporate social responsibility initiatives. He explains why this change from top-down to stakeholder-driven initiatives means higher returns for us all.

“Poverty is not just about an economic challenge. Extreme poverty is a condition where families cannot make meaningful choices to determine their own future.” The role of Nuru is to put those choices back on the table. In this audio interview, Jonathan Chang speaks with Jake Harriman, Founder and CEO of Nuru International. Nuru works to raise awareness of poverty in the developed world. At the same time they foster self-sufficiency in remote rural communities in East Africa. From combat operations in Iraq to Stanford Business to rural Ethiopia, Harriman traces his personal path towards sustainable solutions to poverty. This show was recorded as part of the Impact Innovators series, in which we speak with some of the most important players in the world of impact investments.

Human capital is the most valuable asset in the social sector. Developing an effective human capital strategy enables nonprofits to grow, scale, and achieve greater impact. In this audio lecture from the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Nonprofit Management Institute, Omidyar Network partner Sal Giambanco discusses how nonprofits can create a recruiting framework and demonstrate organizational value to employees. He explains how to attract and engage an excellent team. By sharing examples from his years of coaching nonprofit executives from around the world, he explores questions such as: How do you attract the right talent to your organization? How do you enable them to be successful? How do you build a talent pipeline to engage future leaders? In this lecture, Gimabanco discusses techniques a nonprofit can use to execute a successful human capital strategy.