Social enterprise

Green strategies are necessary, but which ones, and how will we pay for them?

How to reinvent capitalism—and unleash a wave of innovation and growth.

Understanding the new organizational form that looks beyond shareholders.

Most companies feel compelled to give to charity. Few have figured out how to do it well.

Maggie Brenneke, director of the Skoll Social Enterprise Program at SustainAbility. When businesses consider their social and environmental bottom lines, they identify new opportunities to innovate. Some of those opportunities can be surprising!

Satisfied with doing good, too few foundations work strategically to do better.

Before the dotcom boom, one never heard the question “what’s your business model?” Asking it would have marked you as dim. A few standard models had been around for a hundred years or so: extractive businesses and agriculture, manufacturing operations, service businesses, media companies, and financial intermediaries, each accommodating a few variations like franchising, piecework, […]

How organizations can meet people's new expectations of their workplace.

Markets are emerging for social problems. Consider these numbers: $158 billion = size of the low-income health care market $332 billion = size of the low-income housing market $2.90 trillion = size of the low-income global food market And there are other unformed markets that cut across income levels: For example, what’s the size of […]

Offering meaningful work isn’t enough.

Social entrepreneurs need grit, courage, and commitment.

To address the dire need for skilled technology workers, American business must recognize a different color of collar.

Consumers in poor countries especially stand to benefit.

Researchers are coming to surprising conclusions about how riches are distributed in societies. Their findings not only have important policy implications but also shed new light on the way complex social and economic networks operate.

A few hours after a massive earthquake struck Haiti, I was having dinner with Jimmy Wales, Sue Gardner and a couple of other Wikimedia folks. We discussed, among other things, the tremendous success of Wikimedia’s latest fund-raising campaign. It wasn’t until I returned to my hotel room that I saw breaking news about the devastating […]

A growing number of multinationals are now devising creative business models to serve the bottom of the economic pyramid (BOP) — people who live with an annual per capita income of less than $1,500. But despite their good intentions, these global corporations still view the BOP as a market — where poor buyers dream about […]

Have you noticed the tectonic plates starting to shift? Values and social purpose are creeping back into the business strategy conversation. Big societal...

There is a new social entrepreneurial movement afoot, which seeks to find cures to some of the world’s most challenging diseases. Medical entrepreneurship is, in my view, the very best hope we have for accelerating the pace of finding medical cures. A good example and arguably the pioneer of this movement is Michael Milken’s Prostate […]

Any business can find a social purpose that can drive growth.

The traditionally separate domains of for-profit business and mission-driven social organizations are coming together in powerful new ways.

Aftertaste Foundation (Aftertaste) was an organization that provided livelihood support to women living in the impoverished urban areas of Mumbai, India,...

Randall Krantz sets out to transition his career out of engineering and into an environmental NGO. The case outlines Krantz' career before taking on the...

For the past seven years or so, the Chinese government has been powering ahead with industrial policies to promote low-carbon energy technologies-wind,...

"Natural Gas and Its Role in the New Energy Dynamics" presents a comprehensive look at new natural gas extraction technology (hydraulic fracturing or...

This case considers the EPA's bubble policy, which allows pollution to be managed on a plantwide basis rather than stack by stack. A pollution constraint...

Gone Rural employs 750 women in rural communities across Swaziland to produce handwoven baskets and other hand-crafted items. The women are mostly grandmothers...

InterfaceRAISE is a sustainability management consulting firm created to leverage the capabilities of its parent company Interface Inc., a carpet manufacturer...

SK Group was one of the largest companies South Korea. A family-run conglomerate consisting of around 120 subsidiaries and employing more than 100,000,...

The degradation of the environment has led many governments and customers to pressure businesses to make their operations more nature friendly. The case...

City Sealcoating CEO Keith Chaney had just publicly called out the Boston Chamber of Commerce for their slow progress on their supplier diversity program,...

The series of Janet Ames cases follow a fictional alumna of Harvard Business School into her consulting career in Boston. Over the series of cases, Ames...

Arist was a Boston, Massachusetts-based startup with a text message learning platform. It was founded by three undergraduate students and raised more...

The case presents the challenges confronting BrightSource, a company building a commercial-scale concentrated solar power plant in California in 2013:...

Green Monday began in 2012 in Hong Kong as a nonprofit organization advocating sustainability and a plant-based diet. After three years of consumer education,...

When a career public employee in a research division of the US Forest Service gets a call from a lobbyist for a coalition of environmental advocacy groups,...

This note provides background on the complex issues regarding the supply and consumption of water and how this natural resource is at increasing risk,...

Acumen Fund is a global venture capital firm with a dual purpose: it looks for a return on its investments, and it also seeks entrepreneurial solutions...

This case describes the rapid growth of a social enterprise in Singapore - Foreword Coffee - that aims to empower persons with disabilities by providing...

Green strategies are necessary, but which ones, and how will we pay for them?

How to reinvent capitalism—and unleash a wave of innovation and growth.

Understanding the new organizational form that looks beyond shareholders.

Most companies feel compelled to give to charity. Few have figured out how to do it well.

Maggie Brenneke, director of the Skoll Social Enterprise Program at SustainAbility. When businesses consider their social and environmental bottom lines, they identify new opportunities to innovate. Some of those opportunities can be surprising!

Satisfied with doing good, too few foundations work strategically to do better.

Before the dotcom boom, one never heard the question “what’s your business model?” Asking it would have marked you as dim. A few standard models had been around for a hundred years or so: extractive businesses and agriculture, manufacturing operations, service businesses, media companies, and financial intermediaries, each accommodating a few variations like franchising, piecework, […]

How organizations can meet people's new expectations of their workplace.

Markets are emerging for social problems. Consider these numbers: $158 billion = size of the low-income health care market $332 billion = size of the low-income housing market $2.90 trillion = size of the low-income global food market And there are other unformed markets that cut across income levels: For example, what’s the size of […]

Offering meaningful work isn’t enough.