Tag Archives: Social Innovation

Turning values into action

by Mary C Gentile. Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2010 Social innovators are usually motivated by their personal values, yet they don’t always act on them, because they are afraid it might lead to conflict.  Even when they do act, it often ends badly.  To remedy this, social innovators can learn how to articulate their values consistently and act on them in a way that is likely to lead to good outcomes. So concludes Gentile … Continue reading →

Posted in Ethics, Issue 8: Summer 2010-2011, Social Innovation | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Guide to Social Return on Investment

published by The Office of the Third Sector, United Kingdom; 2009. How to measure organisational impact in the Third Sector is a long held conundrum. Now, however, there is a new pressure that confers an aura of urgency to the issue: the social marketplace. Advocates of the social marketplace understand the need for a universally recognised unit of measure for social returns. Given the lack of agreement in the sector, the UK government has stepped … Continue reading →

Posted in Demonstrating Social Impact, Issue 5: Summer 2010 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Book Review: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Book by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, HarperCollins, 2009. Reviewed by Barbara Merz. This book was my companion while delayed at an airport recently. Right beside the Starbucks café at LAX airport waiting for my flight to Sydney I noticed an advert with a small Afghani girl with bright eyes and a determined face. It read ‘Role Model.’ Fellow travelers were stopping by, perhaps jarred by the message. The poster was part of a broader … Continue reading →

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Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading

by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky; Harvard Business School Press, 2002 Leadership on the Line is oft-cited by tenured leaders as a favoured text, perhaps because the book offers a highly empathetic perspective. Heifetz and Linsky argue that leadership is a dangerous undertaking. They encourage those who want to “step forward, make a difference, take the heat, and survive to delight in the fruits of your labor.” This book helps leaders face and mitigate … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Blessed Unrest

Book by Paul Hawken. Reviewed by Jonathon Fisher. “Only connect,” wrote the British author E.M. Forster. This is the message I take from Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest, a book which has important lessons for those of us catalysing social change movements. Blessed Unrest suggests that although there are vast numbers of people and organisations who share the desire for a transition to a saner and wiser culture, most of them are not connected with each … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Issue 7: Winter 2010 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

How to Start a Movement

by Derek Sivers, TED.com, filmed February 2010 and posted April 2010. How do you spark a movement for social change and what is required? It may not be what you suspect. The talk, “How to Start a Movement,” by Derek Sivers is really about courageous followership. In his words: “The first follower is what turns a lone nut into a leader.” Based on a video of concert goers, he draws out lessons about how movements … Continue reading →

Posted in Issue 7: Winter 2010, Leadership | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Imagining the Future of Leadership

Harvard Business Review Blog Series, blogs.hbr.org/imagining-the-future-of-leadership/, April- May 2010. This six-week blog series arose when Harvard professors were asked how leadership might look in the future. Indra Nooyi, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, was Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s answer to the question: Who do you imagine as the future face of leadership? She pictures Indra Nooyi because she is: “cross-cultural, female, visionary, and values driven.” Under Nooyi, PepsiCo has created innovative public recycling kiosks and … Continue reading →

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The Normative Problem with the Term ‘Next Generation’ Leaders

by Rosetta Thurman, Stanford Social Innovation Review; January 25, 2010. This piece suggests that the normative problem with the term ‘Next Generation Leaders’ – as applied to young leaders in the nonprofit sector – is that it limits these individuals’ impact today. The author posits that by waiting until these young leaders have sufficient characteristics to make them “now” leaders, they will have to wait until the Baby Boomers have left their posts. But Baby … Continue reading →

Posted in Issue 7: Winter 2010, Leadership | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change

by Adam Kahane, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2010. Adam Kahane spoke about Power and Love to a Sydney Leadership audience at The Benevolent Society earlier this year. After two decades of work with seemingly intractable conflicts around the world, Kahane understands the challenge of wedding principles to practicalities. He pins the failures of the Copenhagen climate change summit to bring together the greenies’ love camp with the industrialists’ power camp. Rhetorical pleas to save the planet for … Continue reading →

Posted in Ethics, Issue 7: Winter 2010 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Strength Through Flexibility

by Kim Jonker, The Stanford Social Innovation Review; Winter 2010. This case study follows the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) as it seeks to change the culture of the classroom across a continent with several thousand distinct ethnic groups and cultural norms. It’s well known that educating girls is one of the most effective development interventions to lift whole communities out of poverty. In the early 1990s only half of Africa’s school age girls … Continue reading →

Posted in Issue 6: Autumn 2010 | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off