innovation

A collection of 30 posts

benkler

Thanks for helping "decode"

(Note to my cherished email subscribers: I'm not sure why the email posts are suddenly truncated, I'm working on it. In meantime, the Title links in your email should be live and take you through to the blog itself. Thanks!) Thank you all who have been

cross-platform philanthropy

Change native to the digital world

(photo by kjarrett, Flickr, Creative Commons) I'm looking for examples of social change organizations that are totally native to the digital world. They were created in and around digital tools and they use these tools to manage their work, communication, programs, fund development - everything. The prevalence of

innovation

More thoughts on what is next

[Cross posted from SSIR] "Green Shoots" for New Philanthropic Forms I’ve been writing about information as the currency of change for a long time. Everything I have seen in philanthropic innovation in the last two decades is predicated on this simple observation—there are two kinds of

innovation

Institutional isomorphism

(Photo: 416Style, Creative Commons, Flickr) It is always nice when ideas from this blog get picked up elsewhere. My last two posts, on breaking new boxes and considering alternatives, came from my reflections as I begin research on the possibility that technology has led to fundamental changes in philanthropic behavior.

capra

Foundations - set your content free!

I am working on a book on information, knowledge and philanthropy. This is not news - I've been "working" on this since my last book in 2004. This is the year, I can feel it (Hey, if I can get to "inbox 0" I

innovation

Life in 140 bit bits

I've been not blogging for the last month. For most of that time, I've been not working, not writing, not doing much of the stuff for which I'm known in my professional community.* On the rare moments during which I've tuned into

innovation

Mapping medical donations

Hey - check this out - global map of medical donations Made possible by the Partnership for Quality Medical Donations www.pqmd.org - "...an alliance of pharmaceutical, health product companies and humanitarian organizations that donate billions of dollars in medical products each year to help people in developing

brest

Data matter

Data matter. So says Paul Brest, President of the Hewlett Foundation. Given my earlier posts on data, and the list of ideas that several groups have endorsed as ways to improve philanthropy, this paragraph from Brest's letter jumped out at me: "In other development work, the Hewlett

ideas

Big (?) Ideas

Several groups from several sectors have met in the last month+ to discuss ways to improve philanthropy and social investing on a global scale. In no particular order, and with no authority other than my own, here are some of the ideas I know of that are being discussed:* * New

huffpo

More social innovation, this time Jewish

Over on Huffington Post there is a great post about innovation in times of recession. It focuses on opportunities for social innovation in the Jewish community, but only a little of what it has to offer are specific to that community. Here are the authors' three identified opportunities: "

Predicting pandemics with search engines

Google has realized that it might be able to predict flu outbreaks by monitoring search patterns. To see what they see check out Google Flu Trends. This is an example of the kind of disruptive innovation that becomes possible when you see new information or old information in new ways.

campaigns

What can philanthropy learn from political campaigns?

I recently found myself wondering what the tactics, strategies, infrastructure, governance changes, and technology applications that distinguish this Presidential campaign from others might mean for communities and community philanthropy. I had just read a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle,  and was walking to get bagels on a sunny morning.

innovation

Innovation in philanthropy

The Kellogg Foundation/Monitor Institute just published a paper on innovation in philanthropy that is worth a look. Find it here. This may be more relevant than ever, as tough economic times are often powerful catalysts to change - a point I've tried to consider here and here

innovation

Online Social Action Platforms

Causewired is building a list of online social action platforms. So is Peter Deitz. Check them out as complements to this list. Tags: philanthropy, socialchange, technology, innovation, platforms

dml

Social media for social change

Yesterday, I hit the 1000th post mark on this blog. Whew. (Anyone wondering why I haven't delivered those manuscripts to my publisher now knows the answer). In honor of that, I'm simply going to use this post # 1001 to draw your attention to what the experts

innovation

Measuring failure

Two topics of frequent discussion in philanthropy - metrics and innovation - just came together in an interview I heard while listening to the radio. Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace spoke with A.G. Lafley, CEO of Proctor & Gamble and author of a book on innovation,  The Game-Changer. You can

innovation

More improvements for social idea markets

This post on improving markets for social ideas mentioned InnoCentive - an online marketplace connecting people with ideas to institutions that can make them real (in both social and commercial spheres). The CEO of InnoCentive just added a comment, which you can read here, but he notes two things they

innovation

It's a pen, it's a pledge card, it's a cell phone!

Everything about the panel set up looked familiar - four chairs on a raised dais, clip on mics, water glasses. It wasn't until  the moderator of this particular discussion opened it up to the audience for questions that I realized I was truly among a different group than

innovation

Your digital age

My SSIR blog post from yesterday updates the philanthropy adoption cycle I first posted here. Versions 1.0 and 1.1 of this are somewhat tongue in cheek (yes, I am trying to provoke some kind of discussion) I am seriously thinking about the paths and timing and cycles and

chipchase

Gaming for Gorillas

Since I am working out some ideas on how and why and when philanthropic foundations adopt technology and because I am on the advisory board of Games4Change and because I am going to the Goldman Environmental Prizes celebration tonight and because I thought this NYT story  on mobile phone anthropologist

ideas

Questions, not answers, on open source philanthropy

I wrote a book chapter about open source philanthropy. It is in The World We Want, edited by Peter Karoff and Jane Maddox and includes an interview with me called, "Open Sesame: Networks of Cooperation and Open Source Solutions." It presented seven building blocks for bringing open source

ideas

Public ideas

A recent opinion column in The Chronicle of Philanthropy called for better protection for public policy ideas. Huh? This was a mind-bending piece for me, one which I finally realized struck me as the "solution" being - at best, a misapplication of resources - and, at worst, a

innovation

Social Innovation Camp

A few weeks back I wrote about Kluster and the promise it might hold for rapid prototyping of social ideas. Here's a better example - Social Innovation Camp, London, April 4 - 6, 2008. For 72 hours techies and social innovators will work on the following six ideas:

innovation

Trend Analysis for the Social Sector

I've written before about where we stand in developing philanthropic capital markets (I'm sticking with this term, instead of the more en vogue "social capital" markets" because social capital is a term that refers to "connections within and between social networks"

innovation

That was fast...was it any good? Can we do that?

Those are just some of the questions we should all be asking 72 hours from now, when the Kluster experiment comes to an end. Set your watch for 8 am, Pacific time, March 1. What is Kluster? Crowdsourced product development. Huh? Kluster is a design process that uses input from