Product Description
Could Wal-Mart offer a better solution to healthcare than Medicaid? Could GE help reduce global warming faster than the Kyoto protocol?
Social Innovation, Inc. declares a new era where companies profit from social change. Leading corporations like GE, Wellpoint, Travelers and Wal-Mart are transforming social responsibility into social innovation and revolutionizing the way we think about the role of business in society. Based on four years of measuring the social strategies of America's leading corporations, Jason Saul lays out the five strategies for social innovation and offers a practical roadmap for how to get started.
- Explains the fundamental shift in the role of business in society, from social contract to social capital market
- Identifies the 5 social innovation strategies: submarket products and services, social points of entry, pipeline talent, reverse lobbying, and emotive customer bonding
- Offers step-by-step guidance for creating economic value through positive social change
Social Innovation, Inc. is about making social change work for the business, and in turn staying relevant in the new economy.
From the Inside Flap
Social Innovation, Inc. declares a new era, one in which companies profit from driving social change. Leading corporations like GE, Wellpoint, Travelers, and Walmart are transforming social responsibility into social innovation and revolutionizing the way we think about the role of business in society. Their breakthrough strategies are producing unprecedented business results by solving social problems. To seize these burgeoning opportunities, Jason Saul, founder of Mission Measurement, shows companies exactly how to develop a new generation of business strategies.
Social innovation differs from traditional corporate philanthropy and social responsibility in four fundamental ways. Social innovations 1) are primarily designed to produce business value, 2) leverage the machinery of the business to solve social problems, 3) are scalable and sustainable, and 4) often address market failures. Based on four years of research measuring the social strategies of some of America's leading corporations, including Kraft, Starbucks, and Levi Strauss, this book reveals the five successful paths to social innovation:
Create revenues through submarketproducts and services
Enter new markets through backdoorchannels
Build emotional bonds with customers
Develop new pipelines for talent
Influence policy through reverse lobbying
Social Innovation, Inc. is about making social change work for the business, and in turn, staying relevant in the new economy. With compelling case studies, fresh thinking, and step-by-step guidance, Social Innovation, Inc. shows exactly how to create—and sustain—economic value through positive social change.
From the Back Cover
Praise for Social Innovation, Inc.
"A must-read for business leaders, policy makers, and not-for-profit executives. Social innovation may be one of the greatest untapped business opportunities and the way to reconcile responsibility and profits."—William M. Daley, vice-chairman and head of corporate responsibility, JPMorgan Chase, and 32nd United States Secretary of Commerce
"Social Innovation, Inc. is not about companies doing good for good's sake. Jason Saul provides business leaders with sensible strategies for creating social value as integral drivers of business strategy. His ideas come alive with practical examples from the field."—Allen S. Grossman, professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School
"A must-read for corporate CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs. Corporate philanthropy no longer has to be an obligation for business; this groundbreaking book shows how any company can make social innovation into a business strategy and address one of the great remaining untapped business opportunities."—Morris Miller, managing director, Cutstone Ventures, LLC, and former CEO, co-chairman, and co-founder, Rackspace Hosting
"Jason Saul is framing the big issue for capitalism in the 21st century. In a totally transparent world the truth is immediately available for all to see. Unless companies commit themselves to being good they simply won't do well."—Mats Lederhausen, founder, BE-CAUSE, and former managing director, McDonald's Ventures
"Social Innovation, Inc. will help lead the way toward the mainstreaming of an important and creative new framework for us all, from businesspeople to philanthropists, investors to customers, in how we think about integrating social factors into initiatives. Through the work of creative yet practical thinkers such as Jason Saul, we hope that private and public sector leaders alike are rapidly inspired to begin to think differently about the wider social perspective of their policies and practices."—Stephen J. George, co-founder and CIO, Capricorn Investment Group
About the Author
Jason Saul is one of the nation's leading experts on measuring social impact. He is a Lecturer of Social Enterprise at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and the CEO of Mission Measurement LLC, a strategy consulting firm that helps corporations, nonprofits, and the public sector measure and improve social impact.
